Apple's Top 10 iPhone Gaffes

Having woken up from my spout of iPhone induced gizmo-lust, I've uncovered 10 ways Sir Jobs and co. have flubbed the iPhone introduction. And so without further adieu here they are......

David Greenfield

January 16, 2007

3 Min Read
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Having woken up from my spout of iPhone induced gizmo-lust, I've uncovered 10 ways Sir Jobs and co. have flubbed the iPhone introduction. And so without further adieu here they are... 1. The camera is out-of-date, already. If I'm going to spend $499 on this thing why would I want a 2.5 megapixel camera on a product that's going to ship in six months when four Megapixel camera phones are already out?

2. The iPhone is crying out for built-in video calling, but it's not possible, at least in the first model. The camera is on the wrong side.

3. The visual voicemail that Steve Jobs was so sure would revolutionize telephony is nothing more than unified messaging that's we've had for years.

4. Sure browsing on the Internet looks cool in demos but get ready to pay and wait. The Cingular Wireless Edge data network used by the iPhone often drops to dial-up speed.

5. That onscreen keyboard looks awfully difficult to use. Watching Jobs punch in those letters looks downright painful. Don't expect to be typing long-emails on that baby.6. Speaking of input, where's the voice recognition? Ok so even if that's too far ahead of where we're at what about text to speech? GoogleMaps would be way cooler if the directions were being read to us while we drive.

7. iPhone would also be helped big time with a GPS locater. Sure that'll come in handy with the GoogleMaps, but it'll also come in handy when I lose my darn thing. Think about the marketing possibilities. Apple could then sell two iPhones one for you to use and then one for you to find the one you've lost!

8. Jobs compares iPhone to the smartphone. So who buys smart phones? Enterpises and white collar workers. And who's going to buy iPhones? Not enterprises that's for sure, at least no time soon. There's no support for synchronization with corporate applications -- namely Notes and Exchange Enterprise support options are lacking. Lose the iPhone device and you'd like to be able to lock it or remotely wipe the memory to protect personal contents. Don???t expect those sorts of capabilities any time soon.

9. Sluggish performance. Early reports from folks that I spoke with are that some apps don???t perform as well as Steve might have led us to believe. Is anyone surprised? Watching the video oo playing with the new iPhone interface looks way cool, but put that into practice and you've got to wonder what it's really going to be like panning, zooming, and moving around images -- and what will that screen do for battery life?

10. Full-scale Internet browsing is clunky on those screens, or so I've heard.And One To Grow On: Where's my AIM? As Jason Snell points out in his blog, the SMS may look like IChat, but yet you can't connect to AIM. Why's that? Maybe it's because TimeWarner didn't pony like its two rival -- Google and Yahoo.

So now you know what to do come June, right? Don't bother opening up those iPhones boxes. Just repack them nice and neat into a Fedex box and ship them to yours truly. I'm sure I'll find something to do with these flawed gizmos.

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