iLash

The iPhone backlash begins, predictably, on the day after the product finally shipped. There's no way the product will ever live up to its hype. I am not saying it won't be a breakthrough product which many users will love. But the "jesus phone" surely won't cure cancer.

The first salvo in the iLash comes from Joe Nocera in a column on the front page of today's New York Times business section. I'd link to it but it's behind a wall that makes linking worthless. Arghhhhh.

I have half a mind to reprint the whole column here just to stick it to the idiots at the NY Times who continue to reject common sense and good business judgment and who won't play nice on the web. But I can't even get into Times Select without getting a free trial which I refuse to do on principal. So no cut and paste here.

Anyway, enough of that. Joe explains that the iPhone doesnt' have a removable battery and that after 300 to 400 charges, the battery will stop charging and you'll have to send your phone (that's right your phone) back to Apple for a replacement. He tried and tried to get an answer from Apple about how they plan to handle this issue, but could not.

You would think that the black eye that Apple got over the iPod battery issues would have knocked some sense into them. But Apple is like the NY TImes. Stubborn and consumer unfriendly.

I expect that bad behavior like this will bring more grass roots "open source" mentality to the consumer electronics business. I sure hope we see the open source hardware movement gaining momentum from nutty stuff like this battery business from Apple. I am betting on it, frankly.

Comments

[Robert Seidman]

Fred, I hope you don't become one of those folks who starts bashing books you never read, movies you didn't actually see and CDs you never listened to...

I got the thing. 1.) it didn't do what i wanted it to (stream my media library via wifi. 2.) I could find no way to drag and drop songs/videos directly to the device -- i had to create playlists and "synch" them.

Despite this -- coolest freaking IPOD ever. I'm not making that up. when you finally jump in, you will probably be very sorry you waited.

the web browser/touch screen and being able to listen to music while browsing is really cool. there's no issue with the keyboard in general though I doubt it will replace your curve for composition.

The bigger video screen made a much bigger difference than I would have imagined. Widescreen movies look beautiful. and the thing will do HD, though...8GB isn't going to allow you to store many movies in HD.

Because the mic is built into the right earbud wire, I can now identify right/left earbud by sight without looking at the actual earbud. for me, this is a time saving feature!

Notes: haven't used it for a phone call (port is not done from my landline), and have not dealt with Edge. Via Wifi I find Safari a little slower loading pages than IE on my desktop, but then again, it was actually CHEAPER than my desktop.

You're MUCH more "fortunate" than I am (if fortune is the metric, haha) but I can still afford this as a toy. It really is the best iPod ever and just like changing your oil, if you have to drop the thing off at an apple store in 18 months to have the battery fixed, neither one of US is going to care because we will have both upgraded to v2 by then anyway.

I don't think you want to wait (even with the AT&T requirement). You're missing out being hands on with the future of handheld computing. Let me state again: haven't used the phone or edge, and even if both of them suck...still not disappointed with the purchase. not on the $600 anyway -- if AT&T still sucks it will annoy me to pay for it, but it'll also allow me to cope until it's poor stepchild of a stand alone iPod is launched.

I liked the browser even with it's no java/no flash (yet) limitations. It's fun.

[dan cornish]

Fred,

I am typing this on my new iphone sitting at UCONN watching my
son's swim meet. I found a wifi hot spot and have been watching Youtube, checking my email accounts, surfing the web and listening to music. I have also been trading text messages with my daughter. All I have to say is that this thing is freakin awesome! You have got to give this thing a try. My Treo 700 feels like a piece of junk.

I have experienced a few bugs, but overall very smooth. Typing does take getting used to, not as good as a Treo or Blackberry. But my thesis is that a Blackberry is to a Wang word processor as an iPhone is to a PC. A Blackberry is really a single purpose machine with other features thrown in. An iPhone is a general purpose device. It will replace my laptop a lot of the time now. My feeling that this is an inflection point is reconfirmed.

I can think of about twenty ways to improve it, and yes I am wishing for a number of features. Web browsing and rss feeds work great, best iPod ever, best mobile email for reading but not composing.

Go out and get one not to replace your Blackberry, but to use a new class of device.

[rick gregory]

yawn.....

Yes, because the iPod battery issues spurred so much development of awesome opensource music players... there's the... um, well how about, no. Oh that's right. None have emerged.

Let's see this might be an issue for people 18 months from now. If the iPhone looks to be a smashing success in 6 months, Apple will have 6-12 months more to have a remedy in place. For example, you could, oh, go into an Apple store and have it done on the spot.

What Nocera misses is that almost no one actually carries spare batteries for their cell phone - so to engineer a removable battery would take weight and space that would be of little use to people except when the battery starts dying. As long as they have a solution in place that works for people by then *there's no issue*. So let's talk in a year or so and see what's what before we write drivel about it, mkay?

Oh, I forgot - it's part of the cycle. We HAVE to whine about something now that it's out. Hell, even if the phone DID cure cancer someone would bitch about it not helping their allergies. Sigh...

[Michael Sitarzewski]

Fred, have you seen the iPhone dissection videos online? The battery, while not consumer replaceable, is replaceable by your tech-savvy friends. It is a 1.0 with a tremendous amount of hype... so it'll all get ironed out. In 6 months this will really be "the" phone.

[Erik Schwartz]

Call me when it has a real network and more storage and after market battery support.

I've bought way too many first generation Apple products.

FWIW, 300 recharge cycles is about a year. I'm cellular only, I can't not have a phone for 3 days (or 3 weeks).

[bijan sabet]

I wanted to love the iphone

I bought one last night.

everything was fine and quite beautiful.

but this thing doesn't have any reasonable connection to msft exchange. and that's what I need more than anything.

This was my experience last night:
http://sabet.typepad.com/bijanblog/2007/06/my-iphone.html

[Robert Seidman]

to be balanced, i have found one major issue (still not sure if it's me or not) in that I can't send pix msgs to other phones...i see that as a major strike if it's not some dopey user error.

There are other quirks as well. click to get to my site if interested.

RS

[Rex Hammock]

Steven Johnson takes on the "battery" issue here. My geek friends are obsessing over missing features, nuanced protocols and tech-issues that consumers will never get around to noticing. I just got back from the local Apple Store where at least a hundred customers where visiting just to see the iPhone (they had already sold today's allotment).

[Robert Seidman]

just to circle back..while there is no phone to phone MMS pix messaging (simply by entering the cell phone's #) if you know the full e-mail address of the cellphone (mine is my#@vzwpics.com on verizon, for example) it works fine.

[mark]

why the hell can i not fit my bose headphones in to the jack at the top of the phone?

other than that, i am truly blown away. still trying to assess the emailing capabilities before i drop my pearl. I can see this thing replacing a good chunk of what i need my laptop for. And dont be fooled this really is wireless internet on a sensible interface - not squinting at some tiny form factor like the bberry or other cell phones.

i predict a massive success for jobs on this one.

was just watchin a youtube video while listening to markus schulz when someone called - the music gently faded out, the page rotated in on itself and the phone asked if i wanted to take the call - i declined and the reverse then happened. I have finally found wireless nirvana.

On a sep note, i have only used it on my wifi at home - but i see dark clouds for att on this one. Nothing but negatives on the network.

[P-Air]

Apple may create beautiful products that every one loves, but they've always come across to me as having a disdain for their customers. I used to use Macs and swore by them, even required that I be provided w/one when I went to work for Reuters in '94. But it didn't take long to start noticing things like;
- never knowing if the Mac's hard drive is on or working because there's no indicator light

- upgrades that don't really upgrade but require new installations

- poor customer support

- geniuses at their genius center (or whatever they call the tech support folks in their stores) that aren't geniuses at all

Like every one else, I love the look of their products, but after having been let down by this company over and over again (most recently w/my iPod which is starting to break down after 2 yrs of very moderate use), I will not be making any platform moves nor buying any of their products 'cause I know the eye candy will not be worth the hassle to come. My wife is an avid Mac user, but when things go wrong w/her Mac the level of frustration one goes through to get things back on track simply isn't worth it. I'll stick w/my ol' skool Dell laptop and like it ;) Why everyone thinks that the iPhone will open the door to a friendlier less arrogant Apple, I have no idea.

[David Parise]

I was first on line in my area after 12 hours, I made my way through the football greeting the iphone staff at the Apple store gave. It was a great day!Then I got home and couldn't get service turned on (switched from Verizon to At&T). Spent the next three days wondering why did I buy this thing! But then it happened. Yes, my friends, Jetson's have arrived! The iphone is the first of anything I have seen that resembles anything from the future, It is everything the commericials built it up to be and more. The screen is so vivid even at the beach! I am a photo guy and this is a phpo techy's dream. Imagine loading thousands of pics from your computer and being able to view them with such clarity and speed ( I have had many digital photo viewers and I returned all of them because of slow loading and pic quality ) ! Now, work the magic, rotating to landscape or enlarging it just by brushing your fingers across the screen cropping the pic and then with one click sending it to anyone in the universe or assigning as a contact i.d. You can also run a slide show with a song from your ipod song bank. This is just one of the features I love about this phone!
The Apple magic started for me like this- imac-iphoto-ipod-iphone and now it's all ime!

[Laura]

Apple does have some pretty bad issues with battery replacement. I found a site though that has Anchor Text Code: replacement ipod battery kits that come with instructions and tools so you can do it yourself, or a service that has them replace the battery for you that's much faster and less expensive than Apple's. Looks like they are working on adding the same for replacement iPhone batteries too.
- Laura