Letters to the Editor
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Why oh Why does Salon continue to pay this hack?
Why, oh why do I continue to read this crap spewed out under the Manjoo author? I guess it's like an accident, you just can't not look.
Farhad continues to try and write opinion pieces and sell them as a fact piece.
Let's just look at some of the opinions he tries to push as facts:
Apple Computer is now called Apple. Oops, it's now called Apple, Inc.
predictably bombastic presentation - titilating, mesmerizing,
Apple-cult ritual - cult ritual?
hacker friend Steve Wozniak - try inventor - a hacker is someone who takes someone's invention and tries to dismantle it. Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs created the personal computer industry, this does not a hacker make. It does, rather confirm that Farhad is a hacker of a writer.
For more than two decades....mainly immobile, um the mac portable was used in the 80's.
First it demolished the music business: Uh, no. It renovated it. The music companies are making higher profits than ever before because there's no shipping and no CD or tape to send to a store.
These are just in the first paragraph. Factual? Nope. Opinion piece? Yes.
A question for Farhad: When exactly was the last time your Mac crashed? I mean the whole system crashed rather than a program not programmed by Apple? When? Your statement "Macs crash." gives the feeling that Macs crash like PC's crash. They don't. Yes, they crash. So do ATM machines, bank computers, current phones, even guided missles crash. Backups are what we have to solve this problem. But, when was the last time that your Mac system actually crashed? Please tell me. I really want to know.
A question for the editors: Who is Farhad related to or who does he screw to keep getting in your normally great paper? There can be no other reason for continuing to pay this HACK to put his un-fact-checked articles in your press. Every one of his articles are horrible pieces of opinion. At least, put all of his stuff in the opinion pages.
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The Razr Motorola Phone is $300 and it doesn't do anything neat
So, $500 for a phone that actually does something seems reasonable to me.
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My Samsung A900-MM is $330 retail
Just for comparison's sake, an arbitrary price point of around $500 is not that extreme. Of course carriers absorb most of that cost with rebates, typically hundreds of dollars. I'm kind of surprised that Salon readers aren't familiar with facts like this. Are they all really the luddites they claim to be? I guess so. Anyway, there are quite a few phones in the ~$500 range including the Treo 700p or w, Motokrazr, Blackberry 8703, PPC-7600, Blackberry Pearl, Cingular 8525. All in the $500-650 range, retail before discounts. And today, the MP3 player phones are all pretty crappy. Not much storage, poor codecs, hard to use. A real iPod quality player would be a big leap ahead. It would be like putting a real 6.7 megapixel camera on a phone in lieu of a cheap crappy VGA camera. In other words, an iPhone can replace a phone, PDA and MP3 player at the same time.
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Razr $300?
Mine was free when I renewed my contract with Verizon for 2 years.
It takes remarkably good photos, does text and picture messaging, can be used as an MP3 player or web browser if I so desire, and oh yeah--it's a good-sounding telephone! It has excellent battery life. I can actually hold it between my shoulder and ear. I've dropped it a couple of times and nothing has broken (which would be a big worry for me about the iPhone--that and scratching it, as my iPod got scratched almost IMMEDIATELY). When I'm camping in a cornfield in Iowa, usually of the group of people I'm with my Verizon phone is the only one that actually has service
I have no dog in this hunt--I think the new iPhone is really cool, but I wouldn't spend that much money on it, especially if I had to switch to Cingular. (And before I had some anecdotal evidence that it's actually durable--it just looks really fragile to me.)
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Crashing
Please, people. Every computer crashes. Macs MAY crash less than PCs, but that's purely anecdotal. I have a PC dual-booted with Windows 2000 and Gentoo Linux, and the Linux and Windows sides freeze up in about equal measure. I have a Sony Vaio laptop with Windows XP that's fairly new (less than a year old) and so far it has NEVER crashed. Actually, it rocks and I love it.
No viruses either. I think I've had one virus in the years that I've had a home computer. All PCs (because I am cheap, basically--I like Macs too).
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this is journalism?
About every third time I read a Farhad Manjoo article here, I half expect to see his job title changed to "Negative Feedback Loop Reporter" or "Staff Dick."
Could this article been any less substantiative?
Lemme sum it up: "Apple thinks it's so much cooler than you. It's now selling a phone. You'd have to be an egomaniacal prick to own one of these. It'll probably break anyway."
Sure, I drank the Apple Koolaid (might have something to do with the stock I bought at the bottom that has since gone up almost 15x). But if this device delivers on even *half* of its promises it will truly be one of those industry-changing "killer apps" that every company dreams of creating. And call me crazy, that would make at least 3 that Apple will have created in the last 20 years or so. Maybe they're on to something.
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It Was Self-Inflicted
"Apple apparently fixed its sights on something grander. First it demolished the music business. Today, Jobs announced his new targets: your phone and TV."
Really? I thought the music biz was in the process of slow suicide by failing to monetize digital downloads.
Apple's iTunes store actually helped the biz, though it's still too stupid to take advantage of it.
Cellphones suck. While I doubt that I'd spend 5 or 6 hundred books for one, kudos to Apple for trying to turn 'em into something cool.
(Me, I'll probably wait for an unlocked iPhone Nano.)
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iPhone
I want to have sex with it. Seriously.