Flaunting those numbers does little in a debate over the merits of a device, unless you think every single customer in the world did a bang up job researching and understands every nuance and capability of said device.

I know naysayers iPhone is supposed to suck right? Meanwhile it is probably the most popular mobile device with over 25K apps and growing faster than all others!

The naysayers are plugging the Palm Pre without EVEN seeing it! The other moron above is talking Zune! HAHAHA Enough said!

Unlike the Zune’s social, that will allow you only to share a measly song or two for a rotten short period, on the iPhone it’s something that can be used in unlimited ways rather than the limited ways on a Zune!

It’s like Microsoft’s social, only better, because – it should actually be usable! Also, unlike the Zune, who’s users number far and in between, it’s not only usable, but one with millions of users!

You have to sign up for the iPhone developer program:

http://developer.apple.com/iphone/program/sdk.html

@Nick:

True. Good balanced response to all of this. My opinion is still that nothing is better than the iPhone/touch… that is, I’d rather have nothing than the iPhone/touch at this point in time.

I’ve held off buying an iPod touch for a different reason: I want 64GB. So for me, the best mobile device is nothing. When a 64GB or 128GB iPhone with a Pay as You Go plan arrives, I will buy it (my old AT&T PAYGO “plan” cost about $25 for three months, that’s how little I used it), but I just can’t afford to spend $2000 on a phone.

@Everyone:

There are tradeoffs. Not every phone will be strictly better or worse in every possible way. For many it appears Apple makes a great device that they are willing to live with. The 3.0 update will remove most of those “small” (obnoxious) reasons keeping people from using the iPhone/touch.

Pundits and smart alecks are missing the fact that what the iPhone does is not just some marketing gimmick, but actually has substantial convenience/fun factor gains IN NORMAL usage. Walk into the Apple store or borrow a friend’s iPhone and you can learn how everything works without reading the manual, just by playing with it. The same could not be said of my lame cheapo “feature” phone. Sure it may have worked in theory, in the end, eventually, but every moment I used it I felt like throwing it at a wall.

I still think not enough is being made of the fact that now that the iPhone is “caught up” to other phones’ basic feature list(s), what about all the new cool stuff announced for the iPhone (like auto discovery, accessories) that when you put it all together (combined with the old stuff form 1.0 days, like tilt and multi-touch, ACTUALLY USABLE GUI INTERFACE, that no iPhone killer has offered yet) makes for a software platform TODAY untouched by any competitor?

People arguing that the UI usability and conventions that form the core of the iPhone OS are less important (“1.0 features”) or are just marketing gimmicks (that could have been added later) seem to be the same ones complaining about the lack of copy paste in iPhone 1.0. The truth is, in the end, on some level these are convenience issues that can be worked around: phones with less “fun” interfaces can still be used, sort of, and on the iPhone you can manually copy and enter text laboriously, if you have to (not fun). But just like two cars, one with and one without cruise control, in actual use the difference is stunning. There: Apple added cruise control (copy paste) to their luxury sports sedan. Now when are the other manufacturers going to add a steering wheel and brakes to their jalopies?

Also, just because the iPhone is dominating sales, does not mean it’s the best device out there. That means they have the best marketing department. I think assuming every person out there that buys a phone is doing their due diligence and choosing the best one is a highly inaccurate assumption.

Thanks for your article. I like your articles in general. Most of the time they’re much more well-thought and balanced than what seems to be usual in the blogosphere. I like that. Lots of bloggers seem to be too “digital”: either they like it (1) or they don’t (0), there is no in-between. Thanks for this balanced view on the announcement iPhone OS 3.0. And… I’m very exited about it, too!

You download for free and then if you want/need the extra functionality/levels etc; then you pay from within the app and you get the full thing.

As for the arguments above. A lot of these announcements were for features that should’ve been included from the beginning. Copy & Paste, MMS, Landscape keyboard, adding more than 1 photo to e-mail and the SMS improvements should have been in 2.0 at the latest. This is the third version and it’s finally there? It’s a good OS but those were some major shortcomings. Yes 17m people bought an iPhone, me included, but that doesn’t mean those features were any less important. We all just chose to ignore them. I’m sure in a lot of cases people weren’t aware they weren’t available. The number of people who were surprised when I said it didn’t do MMS pays testament to that.

Apple shouldn’t be saying how wonderful their update is, that’s up to us as the customer to decide, they should be apologising for it taking so long to get a lot of these features in and promising that they’ll take more notice of feedback in future.

“The new APIs would be good, but… uh, what if they’re hard to use??!! Yeah, they could be hard to use!! That means the iPhone sucks!”

Is that the best you can do? The iPhone is obviously easy to develop for. You’re betting that will suddenly change?

You’re arguing against the iPhone via a list of items culled from multiple devices as if they all existed on one device.

If you want to have this discussion, we have to start with real phones. That means stop throwing features out like I can walk into AT&T or Verizon or Sprint and buy the mythical phone being described. Give me a real phone.

You already know my chosen device: The iPhone. You know what it is now, you know what is costs now, you can actually walk in and buy one now, and you also know what’s coming (at least software-wise). Give me your phone. The RIM Storm? The HTC G1? Some LG phone, perhaps? A Windows Mobile device? Give me a real, available, tangible phone, and we can then discuss them.

Otherwise, you’re simply inventing an imaginary device against which you claim the iPhone doesn’t measure up. It’s THAT form of argument I took (and still take) exception to. Give me a phone, and we’ll compare them.

Actually they JUST SHOWED YOU MANY DEVELOPERS (EA, ESPN, Oracle, etc., etc., you did watch the presentation, right?) and what they could accomplish in two weeks. And 25,000 applications have been developed for the existing APIs so it has to be a low bar, right?

“I have not yet downloaded the new SDK for experimentation, so I cannot comment. But if they are difficult to use, they are worthless.”

The SDK has been downloaded 800,000 times and numerous developers have lauded it for how well designed and easy it is to use. I have personally developed for Palm OS and the APIs are nowhere near the iPhone APIs.

“Or GPS add-ons that enable turn-by-turn directions. And while Apple might be providing an API to make this slightly easier, some smart developer will actually have to create software to do this.”

TomTom and TeleNav already developed the iPhone turn by turn directions and was waiting for the green light and the new APIs. The App is already done it is not a question of when. When iPhone 3.0 ships this summer.

“It’s very likely that the VAST majority of those downloads are for free apps: Stanza, Pandora, Tap Tap Revenge 2, Facebook, etc. Which brings up another point: How many of those apps exist because Apple of Apple’s initial sloppiness?”

Facebook app exists because of Apple’s initial sloppiness? What? I suppose that app is built in to WinMo?

“Even Microsoft (kings of nasty underhandedness) has a healthy ecosystem of hard-ware add-ons for handhelds. ”

Wonderful pieces of technology, those WinMo devices: (quote from customer, “Huge old ugly pieces of junk”)
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/08/08/22/iphone_3g_sales_hampered_by_windows_mobile.html

“You clearly couldn’t be bothered to read the conclusion of my first comment. I never said that Palm or Windows Mobile is brilliant or perfect, only that they have important functionality that iPhone lacks.”

True, being twice as thick as the iPhone and having three times shorter standby time (you did watch the presentation, right?) because of background apps is something the iPhone lacks.

“Put simply, Apple is playing catch-up.”

And all the other smart phones out there have 3D graphics, tilt sensors, wonderful game selection, multi-touch, easier to use browsers, etc. or if they don’t, those can be added via a software update, right?