All day I have been tingling over Apple’s bombshells, the iTV, and the long-anticipated iPhone. They are both utter game changers, and the iPhone is just a class killer.

All day long I have been watching blogs along with personal and professional mailing lists say more or less the same things: “OooooOoo. I will cut a bitch for one of these. Except for WAAA and WAAA and WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA” where “Waaa” is usually something trivial, overly specific, and favors the anemic tree over the robust forest.

Sure. Every thing made by every one ever can be improved. But take a breath and think about what Apple did today: 1) a home entertainment device that will transfer content seamlessly from your computer and from the iTunes music store (itself another class killer) and 2) a smart phone with a feature set and price point that is utterly peerless—BOTH OF THEM DONE BY APPLE which does user experience like Kobe does beef.

These devices were not made for the whinging geeks who think they need 10 jillion megatits of bukakke porn browsing on their pocket sized telephones, or those who believe that all information and entertainment must be free and the constitution of the united states somehow grants them the right to wholesale theft and redistribution of someone else’s art.

The iTV and iPhone were made for the masses, and the masses will suck these down like mint juleps on a hot summer day. A

Game over.

Shut your piehole and buy one, or die like the dinosaurs.

Here is a fairly typical example of previously mentioned whinging (and yes, I left off the part where they said they would cut a bitch to get their hands on an iPhone):

[Top five things about the iPhone that make my secret places hurty!!1!one!11!!]
1) Cingular. They’re North America’s largest cellular network, so it makes sense for Apple to deal with them. But it would have been far better if Apple had taken on the carriers’ chokehold on handset provisioning wholesale, and simply sold unlocked phones.

2) 8GB Flash drive. For many, it will be more than enough, but the iPhone won’t kill the iPod until drive sizes start matching the needs of MP3-era music libraries. My fear is that Apple will stick to its guns and stick with Flash media as it grows to 16GB and beyond, but a second-gen iPhone with magnetic storage is an obvious upgrade path.

3) Built-in battery. Apple’s bothersome tradition of non-user-servicable batteries continues. There’s no reason to do this, frankly, aside from the kind of implied “we’re aesthetic obsessives” claim that Apple still gets away with.

4) No 3G. Fast internet is the horse, 3G is one hind leg.

5) With all those features, a QWERTY keyboard stashed within (somehow) would be the perfect way to turn this little beast into Apple’s answer to the UMPC: a cheap, fully-featured computing device in addition to a phone and music player. Even a clamshell… (Read more…)