“Welcome to the Mac Micro,” Sascha Segan and Tim Gideon report for PC Magazine. “The iPhone 3G is the beginning of a new computing platform. With 3G and the App Store, the best iPod ever is now one of the best handheld computers ever. We struggled with a bunch of day-one bugs, but we’re confident that Apple will work them out. Oh, and it’s finally a decent phone, too.”
“Over the past year or so, Apple has made a subtle shift from developing products to building platforms, and it’s a move we applaud. Products are disposable. Platforms grow. We witnessed the shift in the last update to the Apple TV, which gave an old box new features. You saw it when Apple made the iPhone 2.0 software available to original iPhone and iPod Touch owners, as well as to the new iPhone 3G users,” Segan and Gideon report.
“While not a huge physical upgrade over the original iPhone, the 3G hits two of the older model’s critical weaknesses—poor phone call quality and slow Internet connection speeds—and makes it clear that the iPhone is now a platform, a pocket computer that software developers can empower to do anything its users want. It’s a formidable smartphone (though not without weaknesses), a heck of a lot of fun to use, and a device that will grow with you,” Segan and Gideon report.
“iPhone 3G makes our previous Editors’ Choice, the AT&T Tilt, look like last year’s news. This phone is powerful, easy, fun, and just really cool. Apps will come to correct its missing features and make it even better. Hands down it’s the best smartphone on AT&T today and thus our Editors’ Choice,” Segan and Gideon report.
The full review – quite extensive and *gasp* recommended (despite the random nature of PC Magazine’s “Editors’ Choice” criteria or total lack thereof) – here.
Also, check out the companion piece: PC Mag reviews iPhone OS 2.0: Still a niche player, Microsoft Windows Mobile remains Editors’ Choice – July 11, 2008
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Sascha Segan” for the heads up.]
Maybe they read your critique and changed their views?
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When MDN talks, people listen….
Sounds like an old ad from the 70’s
@Wandering Joe: I remember those EF Hutton ads!!! Wow, I feel old…
I had the Vista Anti-Virus thing try to take me over this morning. This is the first time it has ever happened to me, and I have been reading this site for years.
So what I did was to use the ‘contact’ link at the top of the page to notify MDN. I received an email from the Webmaster (who is pretty cool, by the way) that all pop-unders have been suspended.
Instead of just bitching and condemning MDN, why not take a little time to inform them of a problem. They actually do listen.
If you people detest Mac Daily News as much as you say, then please just stay the hell out and leave it for those of us who appreciate it.
@Sir Gill Bates.
Yeah!
BTW, it’ll never happen.
There will always be people that’ll be unhappy (nay, ANGRY!) that everyone doesn’t think, act and say exactly the things that they think they should.
To those suffering Safari getting high-jacked: Use the contact link to send MDN a notice with the URL you are being redirected to. They will chase it down and may even send you a “thank you” note. That’s what they did for me … but then again ….I didn’t blow them off as assholes in the comments section first.
I have no idea what all these folks are complaining about.
I suggest they visit http://pimpmysafari.com/ and see what is available to help them with their problems.
Out of interest exactly how many editors does PC Mag have? How can one day it not be then the next it is. Weird.
Six Vodkas: Oh so true.
Brau: Amen.
qka: Sweet!
For the best control over the garbage of the internet. Install a hosts file to the bottom of your /etc/hosts file using sudo pico /etc/hosts , arrowing down and copying then pasting the host text file you see on the link below. Then control x, y to save changes and quit terminal. You’ll need to update it every few months or so but it blocks parasites from ad servers.
http://www.mvps.org/winhelp2002/hosts.htm
Basically this tell your computer the DNS number for bad web sites is 127.0.0.0 (your own computer!!) So it never connects to the hostile sites!! From ANY web site!
Great for blocking sites you don’t want your kids going to anymore.
I like the Tuner program in the App Store, for $5, which lets you listen to your favorite radio stations on the iPhone. For me in Seattle, that would include KEXP, NPR, and BBC World.
I wrote most of both reviews.
It’s not rocket science. We have a lot of EC categories, but then again, we look at a lot of products (somewhere between 100-150 in the mobile categories each year.) The EC award for “mobile operating system” is separate for the one for “AT&T;smart phone,” which is the one that the iPhone 3G won.
The people on this board obviously don’t need me to explain why the iPhone 3G is the best smart phone for AT&T;. Of the range of smart phones available from AT&T;, the iPhone 3G is the best one.
But it sounds like you could use some explanation of the OS review, which may have confused some folks around here.
The short answer is that an OS which is only available on devices with one form factor and from one mobile phone carrier in the US can’t win the OS EC, because a large part of the criteria require that people across the US have a choice of devices and carriers that run the OS.
That EC is designed to help, for instance, business people who are looking to standardize on an OS. I can’t in good conscience recommend that they standardize on something that doesn’t let them bid carriers against each other, or something that doesn’t offer devices with physical keyboards. Yes, I know that the people around here hate physical keyboards. But there are a whole lot of people who demand them. An EC OS has to enable that choice.
So the iPhone OS has enabled one of the single best smart phones in the world. The iPhone 3G, as an individual smart phone, is excellent. But for Apple to dominate as a broad platform, they need to offer their products on more carriers than just AT&T;, and potentially with more form factor options.
Here’s another form of that explanation, on a board that I check regularly:
http://discuss.pcmag.com/forums/1004403812/ShowThread.aspx#1004403812
sasha: people once demanded buggy whips, too.
Sent from my iPhone 3G
@ Sir Gill Bates
I had that Vista anti virus thing pop up as well, and I contacted MDN about it. The Webmaster said the same to me.
Sr Bill Gates(wannabe) said: “So what I did was to use the ‘contact’ link at the top of the page to notify MDN. I received an email from the Webmaster (who is pretty cool, by the way) that all pop-unders have been suspended.
Instead of just bitching and condemning MDN, why not take a little time to inform them of a problem. They actually do listen. “
MDN contracts with someone to run their ads. They have to as tech savy – or more so – than most other websites out there. They should know full-well where the ads come from, and testing their own site constantly.
If they’re not A-Holes, then they’re just plain lazy.
Take your pick.
Just cause they sucked up to you (or are you one of them ghosting as a user) doesn’t mean they are being responsible.
Mr Hagan the writer said: “So the iPhone OS has enabled one of the single best smart phones in the world. The iPhone 3G, as an individual smart phone, is excellent. But for Apple to dominate as a broad platform, they need to offer their products on more carriers than just AT&T;, and potentially with more form factor options.”
Sometimes people don’t know what they want until someone gives it to them (Obama’s Marxism is an example). I don’t think Apple is in the “phone” business so much as they are in the “Intelligent OS Design” business. The iPhone demonstrates that you don’t need a variety of “forms” to satisfy divergent users. It’s the accessibility of the OS that makes the iPhone so attractive.
Not saying it can’t be improved.
And really can’t argue about more carriers or better pricing to penetrate market and make their brilliant OS more widely available (ever see an ad for the Mac Mini in the last year?). Jobs doesn’t want poor people walking into his precious Apple stores, or to see his product at a Wal-Mart. He’s a snob.
Volume volume volume. The more you produce, the cheaper you can make it, the more profit. However, a company is less exposed to the fluctuations of the economy if their product pricing stays in a comfortable middle ground of the bourgeois and upper crust of buyers. Reduce availability and only certain players can join the game.
Apple/Jobs doesn’t want to be big. Apple has never been able to meet increased demand and never will until the company shifts its thinking to WIN more than the Best OS award – like being Number One in sales.
Still waiting for the Airtunes app for iPhone, who needs Remote?
Handsome Smitty,
“Sr Bill Gates(wannabe)”
Hmmm. Not only a jackass, but a dyslexic jackass.
Tell us Handsome, are you admiring yourself in a mirror right now?
@Handsome Smitty
“Jobs doesn’t want poor people walking into his precious Apple stores, or to see his product at a Wal-Mart. He’s a snob.”
Um… you are aware of the fact that iPods are sold at Wal-Mart, right?
“Apple/Jobs doesn’t want to be big.”
The iPod has ~70% of the portable music player market. That’s certainly not small.
In my comments on the MDN post covering the “other” PC Magazine Editor’s Choice award that went to Windows Mobile, I theorized that many tech journalists base their opinions on two flawed assumptions: “Apple = niche” and “Microsoft = dominant”. I was incorrect to pin this exclusively on tech journalists, though, as it seems to be more pervasive than that.
Apple can be mainstream enough and big enough without having to go for Microsoft-style total dominance. Apple makes their money on hardware – even though it’s their software that truly differentiates them from their competitors, there’s no money in licensing their OS know-how to other hardware makers.
Microsoft’s dominance of the PC industry was a fluke – Windows Mobile is clearly showing that that fluke won’t be repeated. Nobody wants to be so pathetically beholden to any one software company in the way that PC makers have been beholden to Microsoft.
So even if Apple offered to license their OS, hardware companies would be very, very cautious about giving Apple too much power in the arrangement, which would very likely make such arrangements unprofitable for Apple to pursue in the first place.
It might be a great product, but there are none to be had. I traveled (not just for this reason) from Charleston WV to Evansville IN. I stopped at every At&t;store along the way, hitting Huntington, Lexington, Frankfort, Louisville, and about 3 small towns between. Not an iPhone in any of those stores. Looks like someone seriously underestimated demand.
>I like the Tuner program in the App Store, for $5, which lets you >listen to your favorite radio stations on the iPhone. For me in >Seattle, that would include KEXP, NPR, and BBC World.
Some more good ones: wwoz.org, nv1.org, kpfa.org, gulchradio.com
@Dialtone
Never met a left wing liberal crap bucket transmitter ya didn’t like, huh?
kpfa…
lmfao
How’s the weed in Seattle?
That Vista Anti-Virus bullshit tried to jump me, too! Happened yesterday. I just restarted my Mac and it went away and hasn’t come back.
Don’t click on those things.
Peace.
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Olmecmystic
The Vista anti-virus came on my MPB also. I’ve been contacting MDN for a couple of months concerning this crap. The webmaster sent me the following:
“Also, If you wish, you can simply opt-out of receiving the ads here:
https://admin.valueclickmedia.com/optout/index.html
Thank you”
It seems to have worked, so far. Anymore of these and I’m outta here. That would be too bad as otherwise MDN is a great site.
Emeryville, CA Bay Street Apple Store 6:30pm today. I was not allowed entry into the store. I was told only those on line for the iPhone may enter tonight. I said I was just going to look at the display iPhone and buy at another time. No entry allowed. I asked if can I look at a MBP or Mac Pro system ondisplay. No entry allowed. I told him I was a shareholder and it seemed wrong not to let customers look at merchandise or, god forbid, buy a high margin MBP or Mac Pro system. No entry allowed. All store resources are being used for the people on line for iPhones.
Has this happened anywhere else? Do you think this policy is fair? Couldn’t they have 2 or 3 staff dedicated to other Apple customers? The non-iPhone buyer or browser was out of luck in Emeryville, CA tonight.
@Mike,
I went to the Apple Store at La Cantera in San Antonio
yesterday, and they were perfectly OK with me entering the store
to look at iMacs even though I was not buying one of the new
iPhones [have a first generation one and am waiting
until ATT gets 3G going where I live (not in San Antonio) before I
purchase a 3G].