iPhone Reviews Are Rolling In

first post!

Michael,

When do you get a phone to do a review?

Kendal - as soon as I buy one, which will be as soon as I get back from Europe.

Our very own Matt Hickey will be getting one on Friday.

I so tried to convince Apple that nPost should review the iPhone. Frankly, I got laughed at

and Mike will be taking orders for whoever wants one, techcrunch readers only

feel free to email him or call him

I just watched the video review and I have to say I am very disappointed. While very cute and entertaining, I look to the NYT to be honest instead of putting on a 4 minute infomercial about the thing and using 15 seconds at the end to try to appear “real”.

This comment from Mike just may be real “The New York Times and Wall Street Journal are giving it a big thumbs up, ensuring that they will be continue to receive new Apple gadgets in the future.”

I wonder why Apple did not provide these test devices to bloggers who write daily about Apple and help them on a continual basis way more than the NYT does.

iphone is just a cell phone.

paris hilton is just some rich chick.

both are over-hyped by talentless people trying to fill tv/blogspace.

i really don’t need to heard another word about either one….

Not that i’m planning on getting one - but this is big, really big.

I can already see this being featured/mentioned on music videos, movies and press photos of actors/actresses using theirs.

This… changes ….everything - lol

“The New York Times and Wall Street Journal are giving it a big thumbs up, ensuring that they will be continue to receive new Apple gadgets in the future.”

Sour grapes? Perhaps these newspapers prefer mature journalists.

It’s certainly great, but as I said on CrunchGear, I’m very disappointed by the latest news regarding the apparent lack of an European carrier for the iPhone. It’s a shame that such a breakthrough technology can’t be actually widespread as it deserves to be.

They have a live demo of the iphone on cnbc “on the money” and talked about how bad the edge connection speed was. The screen really looked like it was dipped in a tub of hot grease.

I am waiting to see if it would live upto the hype it has created. After all it is just another gadget. Yet, the buzz or the craze it has generated is colossal.

I won’t be surprised if it doesn’t even sell a 100,000 pieces once it is out in the market.

Trying to bring professionals (BlackBerry type of users), young adults (Music, Gaming and Text fans) and travelers (GPS Tracking users) on the same device is sort of an over kill.

As we all know that these three categories are very unlikely to intersect into a single user. And the pace at which technology is changing, it won’t even live up to be used comprehensively.

But I may be wrong.

~Accidents lead to patterns
http://accidentalpatterns.blogspot.com

@8

Then do not write about either

I can’t wait for apple to port over Logic Pro to the iPhone!!!!! (j/k)

Seriously, though, I can’t wait to get one! I’m dropping Sprint.

I’m buying one when it comes out, though I just hope people don’t break it asking to play with it all the time.

Why is it no one can make the perfect phone? The iphone has some amazingly compelling features and is chock full of eye candy, but the lack of 3G, replacement battery, and 3rd party applications makes it dead in the water to me.

Still happy with my Cingular 8525 - even if it is running Windows Mobile.

@11
According to a German newspaper (http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/0,1518,490882,00.html), Apple is actively (and extremely arrogantly) talking to European carriers. Also, iPhone should be available in Europe by the end of the year.

I hope that it will be the beginning of the mobile revolution in the U.S., but will be waiting for a second generation personally.

What I admire about the iPhone is that it’s getting geeks (myself falling into the geek bucket, but not the camping out for a damn cell phone bucket) camping, probably the first time in many of their lives! I may bring my water purifier down to University Ave* with some Backpacker’s Pantry just to make sure everyone is A-OK.

*I’m assuming there are people camping in PA as there are in NY

“The New York Times and Wall Street Journal are giving it a big thumbs up, ensuring that they will be continue to receive new Apple gadgets in the future.”

Sorry, Michael, but that’s a ridiculous assertion.

If Apple withheld products for retaliation for some bad review, then the resulting bad press would hugely outweigh the effectiveness of that gesture. They’d just never do it.

Apple will continue to provide review products to the big outlets like the NY Times, no matter what I say, no matter who holds the job.

Frankly, I’d even dispute your characterization of my review as a “big thumbs up.” I’d call it “balanced.” Excerpts:

“it’s flawed… it lacks features found even on the most basic phones…There’s no memory-card slot, no chat program, no voice dialing. You can’t install new programs from anyone but Apple; other companies can create only iPhone-tailored mini-programs on the Web… can’t capture video… can’t send picture messages… have to send the phone to Apple for battery replacement… AT&T’s ancient EDGE cellular network, which is excruciatingly slow. The New York Times’s home page takes 55 seconds to appear, Amazon.com 100 seconds, Yahoo two minutes. You almost ache for a dial-up modem…deal-killers for some people.”

I’d love to know what you’d have said differently about the iPhone.

–David Pogue
NYTimes

David - As soon as I see one I’ll let you know. Thanks for reading TechCrunch.

The calling plans are reasonable. Take the cost of a regular iPod, GPS, cell phone combined and I say the cost of the iPhone is worth it.

- It can’t send picture messages?

- my stupid Razr (prob Stupid service) has trouble doing that ….

- chat programs like AIM Express … will just be loaded into safari browser on the phone

- no SD card? (you got 8 gigs no problem)

- Can’t capture video? (who cares; phone vids suck anyways)

-RB

I wonder how many unhappy people there will be when YouTube is unusable over the EDGE network. Wifi is great, but how often will you be using wifi on the go?

Maybe I am missing the point here, perhaps Apple’s goal is to create an all-in-one device that phases out low end laptops.

That crunchgear link is a 404

Another iPhone review. This one from WSJ:

http://online.wsj.com/article/.....viewed_day

re David Pogue

Michael your initial comment regarding Apples’ supplying of devices to the NYT was in my opinion unwarranted but perhaps understandable given your obvious frustration at having been ‘left out’.

Where you have really let youself down, though, is in your reply to David Pogue’s post. The man is clearly in good faith, and reponded to your provocations without a hint of irony or anger. You, on the other hand, did not respond to his comments, and even went so far as to try and turn his reply your advantage:

“Look, look everyone! The New York Times reads MY blog !!!”

Very poor and disappointing.

The UI is the biggest question mark in the iPhone’s future, and the keyboard, the most key driver of the adoption curve … http://sramanamitra.com/blog/999
I still cannot imagine typing long blocks of text on this device, but if they have truly got this right …

Out of the missing features there are really only a few serious one, the EDGE network, iChat not on iPhone, limited memory and no Applications… If Apple can tackle that short list they have a 5 star product..

The reason Michael is crapping on the iPhone:

>”…
Paid to Shill Propagandism.
Since Microsoft just got busted yet again with another grassroots payola astroturf campaign that paid several high profile bloggers to lace their opinions with Microsoft jingles, it’s not hard to imagine that the company has outlined its own iPhone talking points as well.

Among those caught red-handed by ValleyWag for repeating the “conversational marketing” jingles in Federated Media’s pay-for-say ad program for Microsoft were:

•Michael Arrington of Techcrunch
•Om Malik of Gigaom
•Paul Kedrosky and Matt Marshall of Venture Beat
•Fred Wilson the “blogger-investor”
…”

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/.....F3078.html

Here’s the vallewag link:
http://valleywag.com/tech/fede.....271485.php

>”Microsoft pays star writers to recite slogan
The stodgy old media industry has a rule that newspaper reporters, and TV news hosts, shouldn’t trade on their public trust to endorse products. It’s become redundant: the reading public typically wants journalists to drop the pretense of objectivity, and wear their prejudices in public. (For the record, my current passions are the iPhone and Facebook.) But there are limits to journalistic endorsements, and Federated Media just crossed them.

John Battelle’s ad network has roped in some of its star writers to an ad campaign on behalf of Microsoft’s “people-ready” catchphrase. In the ads, and the companion site built by Federated Media, Michael Arrington explains how his Techcrunch site became “people-ready”. “When is a business people ready?” asks Gigaom’s Om Malik. “The minute you decide to strike out on your own…” Other writers who’ve been paid to repeat Microsoft’s slogan include Paul Kedrosky and Matt Marshall of Venture Beat, as well as Fred Wilson, the blogger-investor.

I can’t blame Battelle’s team for latching on to this idea. The campaign is slick; and Microsoft is a deep-pocketed client. But it’s disappointing that so many of his most reputable writers have signed on as spokespeople. One would have thought that tech opinion-leaders as influential as Om Malik and Paul Kedrosky would ration their credibility more carefully, and reserve it for companies and products for which they felt real enthusiasm.

FRI JUN 22 2007
BY NICK DENTON
AT 4:59 pm
13,767 views”

OMG, the iPhone cannot record video.
You cannot plug in normal headphones because of the plug setup, that is nasty Apple. I am an Apple fan… but bad Apple…. bad Apple.
You cannot get calls, or even at least notification of an incoming call whilst using web surfing… oh man that is annoying.
Over all NOT impressed. There are better phones for my money.

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