“It’s been the better part of a year since the debut of Apple’s iPhone—enough time for most of the early hype to die down, for the most egregious bugs to get fixed, and for users to learn to deal with the foibles of a new mobile platform—or learn that said foibles are too much to take,” Wendy Sheehan Donnell and Joel Santo Domingo report for PC Magazine.
“Here at PC Magazine, we’ve got iPhone users on both sides. Some are thrilled with the device, others want their $500 back. In the left corner, representing the iPhone fans, is Joel ‘Don’t Call Me a Fanboy’ Santo Domingo, PC Mag’s lead desktop PC analyst. In the right corner, representing those with buyer’s remorse, is Wendy ‘Apple KoolAid Made Me Sick’ Sheehan Donnell, senior editor of our Consumer Electronics team,” PC Mag’s intrepid tri-named and now also nicknamed reporters write.
Full article, in which Wendy complains about AT&T phone service quality, AT&T EDGE speed, iPhone’s speaker and mic quality, the virtual keyboard, and the rest of the usual list of competitors’ talking points while Joel gallantly defends iPhone’s honor, here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “MidWest Mac” for the heads up.]
As we’ve grown fond of saying, AT&T could cut the speed of EDGE in half today and you’d still have to pry our iPhones out of our cold dead hands.
At normal edge speeds they already are cut in half.
Give me a seperate device to transmit GPS coordinates to my iphone and update it with google maps/Locate. I will be happy.
Locate is useless for me, while my AT&T;coverage is excellent.
The one major con: iPhone is locked down to one carrier!!!!!!!!! The rest is not dramatic.
The EDGE controversy is one of the biggest FUD pieces of recent memory.
If the iPhone would have debuted with 3G, most people in US would not have been able to access 3G speeds anyway, and everyone would have suffered greater initial cost and lower battery life.
here, here MDN. My sentiments exactly!
@Mac+
I understand that you (and others) are disappointed with Apple’s AT&T;contract, but Apple has always been more interested in profitability and tight control than market share.
Overall, I think that it’s a good trade-off.
That’s easy:
Cons: AT&T;(Edge)
Pros: everything else
“If the iPhone would have debuted with 3G, most people in US would not have been able to access 3G speeds anyway,”
That fact doesn’t make the excruciatingly slow page loads over Edge any easier to stomach.
I love my iPhone and wouldn’t give it up for anything, but I’ve gotta admit that the speaker truly sucks. Ring tones are not loud enough, and speakerphone volume is so low as to make it useless.
“Apple has always been more interested in profitability and tight control than market share.” – bon
Then tomorrow, you will hear of a multi-touch Gphone doing the same as iPhone but based on open source technology, and available worldwide for a good bargain. Or something very bad, a multi-touch Zune Phone grabbing market share all over the place. When that’s happen, all happen Fanbois will be complaining that iPhone got copied, iPhone was the orignal, but iPhone only got 3% of market share worldwide.
I trully don’t think an unlocked iPhone will make it as cheap as the common Nokia telephone.
Wendy is the only person I’ve ever heard of that likes the Aliph Jawbone.
“foibles”? What is this English Literature Magazine now? Fortunately my iPhone was quickly able to lookup the old French word which means eccentricity.
Wendy: In any case, I’m sure Apple will be back later this year with an irresistible 3G iPhone and charge more; or worse, charge the same or less and stick it to the early adopters who are stuck with EDGE connectivity.
So, is there any way Apple can win here, Wendy? Charge more and they’re greedy. Charge less and early adopters will get screwed.
You know, I have never heard anyone in the tech press look after the rights of the world’s Early Adopters like they have in the last year over the iPhone. Before, EA’s were the guinea pigs that found the bugs and spent the big bucks so R&D;could tighten up their designs for the rest of us. But no one ever cared that they had to spend that money. They certainly had no champions.
Now every bloody reporter with a nit to pick with Apple crows on and on about how EA’s get screwed.
Okay Wendy, listen carefully – I got my iPhone on Day 1. I was delighted when Steve gave me a rebate at the first price drop, but I was certainly not expecting it. Nor would I have been upset if it didn’t happen. This is true for two reasons: (1) because I am extremely pleased with my purchase and (2) because I live on the planet earth, where it has been common practice, for longer than my lifetime, for a company to release New Models with Better Features after some length of time has passed. This is not shocking news to me. I’m okay with it.
So get a grip, kay?
-c
@Mac+
“… tomorrow, you will hear of a multi-touch Gphone doing the same as iPhone … Or … a multi-touch Zune Phone … [and all the] Fanbois will be complaining that iPhone got copied.”
Would they? Why would they be complaining rather than buying one of these handsets?
However, I don’t see this as very likely.
Microsoft hasn’t even got the OS to do it. Microsoft phones don’t run the NT-based operating system. You can’t get a cut-down Vista on a phone, believe me.
What they have for that is another OS — Win CE … which is practice could leave the space out. I.e., it’s more like “wince”.
As for Google’s Android, it’s not much more than vapourware yet. Something good might come out of it, but it’s not finished yet *and* they’ve got to find a hardware maker to use their software, and hope the hardware maker’s up to the task.
I’d be delighted if there were more tempting devices around on the market — not that I’m currently looking to buy myself — but you’re just making me empty promises.
Actually, I’ll modify that. I’d probably avoid buying anything that had the Microsloth software on just on principle. But I’d gladly buy a Nokia with Symbian or Linux or something on — but only if it did what I wanted and did it well.
But neither MS nor Google has anything out there, and neither is likely to for osme time yet. At least Apple has something on the shelves I might want to buy.
Wendy = ugly and mean;
iPhone = beautiful and slim.
I’ll take the iPhone.
It’s a lovely word. And it’s used frequently in the UK.
— Also, around one third of all of your words are from “old French”.
de Villiers
> “foibles”? What is this English Literature Magazine now? Fortunately my iPhone was quickly able to lookup the old French word which means eccentricity.
ATT&T;Sucks! Edge Sucks! Everything else about the iPhone Rocks!
Hmmm..
Okay, there’s no reason to call anyone ugly. Grow up.
Sorry, but anyone named Sheehan is automatically tuned out. Ever since the Cindy one went over the deep end…….
“Wendy = ugly and mean;
iPhone = beautiful and slim.
I’ll take the iPhone.”
Let me just add … and ugly.
She should go back to whatever she was using before the incomparable iPhone.
Joel missed a great opportunity for an opening line:
“Wendy, you ignorant slut!”
It would have been brilliant and hilarious.
“while attempting to push tiny buttons with adult-size fingertips is no small feat”
What kind of meatpaws does she have? Makes me shutter to think…
I don’t like the iPhone, but love the iPod Touch. Strange.
I buy my iPhone on day 1 and a year later it is being upgraded. I buy my nice new Lexus IS 300 a year later they come out with the IS 350. I buy my Samsung 720p HDTV, and a year later I buy a Samsung LCD 1080p and with 120hz tech to replace it. I will never buy anything again, every year they just make a better product. For the same price. We should just all sit around and not buy a single item so companies can go out of business and not have the ability to drive technology and world economy. We can do it all the way back to the stone age.
Buy the product or dont. Apple is not forcing you to buy their product you choose to. I am happy with every purchase I make. And in a couple of months if/when apple upgrades their iPhone line, guess what. I will be there in line waiting. I mean, I dont think i have ever had a phone for over a year anyways. someone should do an actually survey to see what the average life or ownership of a cell phone even is.
So when did foibles become an arcane word? Perhaps it just demonstrates the sinking educational standards here in the USA. Higher standards? But we’d have to pay teachers real money! And we have two wars to pay for! Heaven forfend [or is that word too arcane also? and maybe arcane as well?). Oops, bile attack. Where did I put that Pepto-Bismol?
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judging from the picture of her. VERY LARGE ONES! As soon as I saw the picture I saw why she hates the iPhone it is small, sexy and people want one and like to touch it. everything she is not