Letters to the Editor
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Mostly it's the carriers that suck
In the US it's the structure of the carriers themselves that sucks. We're about a decade behind Korea, Japan, and most of Europe where transparency and portability and high bandwidth services have been around for a long time. So while these are innovative gadgets and certainly there's a market for them (just ignore the 'I hate electronics, I'm a goddamn liberal' crowd) the underlying phone service is still crap. It's slow, it's spotty and it's overpriced.
BTW for you neoluddites there's the Jitterbug phone which is aimed squarely at old people who want a simple phone with big buttons, no other features. You should check it out. Just saddle up the buckboard and toddle down to Ye Olde Radio Shacke. It's next to the macrochaotic candle shop and Peruvian hat store.
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old and new
internet phones are great - the better they, the better for everyone. apple's phone will push innovation all around. but i will never spend that much money for a phone, and if i wanted an ipod, i'd get an ipod. and much of this is nothing new: multitasking internet phone? t-mobile sidekick has been doing that for years. typing emails or instant messages on a tiny touchscreen keypad? hope you washed your hands. at least they're not trying to sell us handwriting or voice recognition with this over-priced, over-hyped, changing-the-world-one-high-end-gadget-at-a-time-type thing. something really new can't happen every macworld.
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Macs do crash, deal with it
Macs do crash. Both my Macbook Pro and my wife's Macbook have crashed many times. They are far more stable than Windows machines, but they are not as stable as Linux machines or real bulletproof machines like Suns. This despite the fact that they run on a very limited set of hardware.
Don't get me wrong, I love my Mac. I am a recent "switcher", although from Linux, not from Windows. I gave up Windows long ago except for games. The reason I switched was not stability though. Even Windows these days is pretty stable. It's the fact that Macs "just work" and are based on Unix so I still can do development work easily. I wanted a laptop which would work out of the box, would sleep and wake up reliably, and in which all the hardware worked (especially switching networks and external monitors) without fiddling with drivers. Linux, while it's great on a desktop these days, still sucks on laptops.
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The "revolution" might be over quick
I'm not sure if people are aware just how many different smartphones there are out there that already do most of, if not all, and in some cases, more than what the "revolutionary" iPhone will do. For the same money, you could buy a Nokia N73 which is an unlocked quad band GSM smartphone that has great call quality, an amazing camera (with a Carl Zeiss lens), FM tuner, etc. It even uses the same Safari software as iPhone. The downside is that it doesn't have wifi on that model but the N80 does. That's just one example.
This is a different situation than the iPod release. Apple is great at marketing so it's safe to assume that they will leverage the interesting design and funtionality aspects and the "family" connection with the iPod.
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What's the problem?
I must admit, although I'm a fairly agnostic computer user (use both PC's and Macs at work, have used Macs almost exclusively outside of work since switching around three years ago), based on previous experience I was expecting a fairly negative review from Farhad, since like others I've sensed a somewhat Apple-negative viewpoint from him. Instead I was pleasantly surprised to find a fairly even-handed, maybe even leaning toward overly positive review for a product that no one has actually used yet. I really don't know what these Mac fanatics are complaining about!
As for the phone's functionality, I've been a Treo 600 user for years... when I got it, having email, SMS, music, the web, a camera and a phone in one device truly seemed revolutionary (and I used them all then, and still do)... but the dialup speeds and the minimal storage capacity for music have made it seem pretty tired now... I'm ready for the iPhone! And for those who are complaining about the cost, please remember it's first generation... I once paid more than that for 2Mb of ram for my Amiga!
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Swoon!
I disagree mightily with a couple of things Farhad said. First, it's not just the famous and the wannabes who lust for all things Apple/Mac related. I am a 37 year old stay-at-home mother of two and wife of one. I am not famous, and -- believe it or not -- I have no desire to be famous. I had a first generation IPod, an IBook, and I'm now on my second IMac (which my loving husband surprised me with for Christmas. Fellows, listen up -- THAT is the only thing sexier than doing the dishes without being asked). I've never had an Apple product crash. Ever.
Up until this moment, I couldn't have cared less what cell phone I carried, and I have avoided Blackberrys and other PDAs because they wouldn't interface with my Mail or iCalendar programs. But now...!
Steve Jobs, may you live forever.
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It's a GSM phone, people!!
There seem to be a lot of people complaining about Cingular being picked as the launch partner.
Did you miss the whole point of making a GSM quad band phone?
This phone will work with any GSM provider around the world. Hopefully it won't need to be "unblocked" like other phones. I would highly doubt that the iPhone sold at Apple Stores would be blocked.
It's my prediction that the only reason to go with Cingular is for advanced features, the only one that I saw being the random-access "visual" voicemail. All the widgets etc should work on any GSM-EDGE network.
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Mac crashes
zedmanauk, neither your macbook pro nor your wife's macbook should be crashing. If they are, there's something wrong.
Have you gone to Apple's support discussion forums? If you can't read the kernel panic dialog, someone there will, and you can isolate the problem. It's not just "something that happens" to macs -- something is screwed up.