Obviously
So I’m willing to admit the iPhone is no longer overpriced in a lot of countries. Obviously, there is no fucking excuse for charging €625 for one, but 200 bucks, I could live with, if I actually wanted it.
However, it’s pretty damn clear that the 2.0 firmware is a joke. Honestly, is there anybody out there who it hasn’t gone belly up on? Is there any use for third-party app support right now? For fuck’s sake.
Of course, luckily, I don’t own an iPhone, so I couldn’t know for sure. But a lot of geeks have been complaining bitching about it. On the national scale, Brice has a great post. On the international scale, naturally, I’m yet again going to have to mention Chris Pirillo.
Now, even after having repeatedly torn his hair out, Pirillo still seems pretty biased to me. Any fanboy—dude, you so are—will pull the early-adopter card, and I say it’s crap. This problem is not a minor defect. It’s widespread and renders the product completely useless.
Moreover, how on Earth is this similar to what happened to Vista? Yes, both were unfinished, but if Vista were so crippled that it couldn’t run any third-party software and that it wouldn’t boot at all, especially on such a large scale, Redmond would not have been arrogant enough to release it.
Obviously, the Apple flock won’t stop bashing the competition. After all, this is just a minor setback, right? Just like the MobileMe rollout. They’ll get it all fixed in the end, and that’s something Microsoft can’t do, apparently. Apple is superior in every possible way.
Just to clarify, I don’t think there’s any real competition for the iPhone 3G right now. None of the other smartphones come close to the iPhone 3G’s theoretical user experience. Sure, on features, Windows Mobile has a clear advantage, and HTC has been doing some nice things with the UI, but I won’t deny that the iPhone revolutionized the smartphone scene. That is to say, Apple released the first iteration in a new wave of technology. It’s what they do. But, as usual, they will be surpassed by their competitors. Of course, it won’t matter, as they’ll always be able to claim that everyone stole their ideas and people will keep preferring their stuff to the lesser-known alternatives.
In this case, as far as competitors go, I am of course referring to the upcoming Android platform. Little is known about the HTC Dream, but let’s face it, Google has the means to turn it into something great, and, unlike with the iPhone, third-party app support was a priority from the start.
That being said, I think the candybar form factor is useless in the first place. The devices are too big to fit in my pocket—my pants are tight, sue me—and yet the screen is still too small to really be useful. Call me conservative, but I’d rather split the two into an elegant cell phone and a classy netbook. But then, I always carry a messenger bag around, which I’d use for the netbook, so ultimately, it’s a matter of preference.