You are right that it’s missing MMS, and many people are annoyed that this—not me, since I hate it, but that’s neither here nor there—and it tracks SMS messages as “conversations” so you do have to delete a conversation. That’s an artifact of the metaphor it uses. The metaphor is different. Does Google Talk allow you to delete a single message? No. Does Pigeon? No. Does Trillian? Adium? AIM? Yahoo? ICQ? No. No. No. No. No. A spurious missing “feature” based on a broken metaphor.

All phones drop calls, and often more because of 1) the network; 2) exact radio propagation issues at that moment; 3) decisions by the cell towers to power up and down their signal based on their understanding of the signal. If you’re aware of a phone that has never dropped a call ever, I’d be happy to hear, as would everyone else. My experience is that I drop calls in the same exact places that others on AT&T’s network do. This is an improvement, since Verizon didn’t even work at my house unless I held the phone “just so”.

Technical advantages mean nothing if they are not usable. That’s ideological purity, but that gets you nowhere. As for a “small and specific group”, well, with what appear to be over 10M sales, that’s not a very small group. How many OpenMoko phones are there? 10? 12? Perhaps 30?

As for bugs, I was actually referring to the conceptual implementation, not the specific code under it. The implementation of “cut and paste” is the specific mode, models and metaphors that are used by the user. The code can be fixed, but once a user and ingrained specific behaviors, it’s nearly impossible to get them to shift.

BTW, the presence of a lawsuit means nothing. People sue for all sorts of reasons, and many of the consumer lawsuits are targeted more for their PR and monetary capabilities than any actual legal reasoning. Is Apple’s 3G reception actually materially worse than any other 3G phone? Probably not. Can a case be made that in some situation, with some variables that it might get a worse signal, perhaps. But then, that’s true of any product. To actually understand this differences, one would have to probe the specific reception issues in a phone under absolutely identical conditions. The water content of your brain is one of those conditions, by the way. How many leaves are on the tree? Which way is the wind blowing? All these things affect radio propagation models, but are generally left out of simulations because you can’t work with that many variables. You just try and saturate the area as best you can given the origin points (tower) you have.

> And last I checked, the iPhone could call, use 3G, do SMS messaging (witness the fact that I do several thousand a month).

Apparently, Jessica Smith went to court for nothing (http://www.informationweek.com/news/personal_tech/iphone/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=210200044), and iPhone doesn’t drop calls (http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/telecom/2008-08-14-iphone-3g-connectivity-problem_N.htm), iPhone supports MMS or single SMS deletion etc.

iPhone is cute but buggy and lacks some popular features (of course, Apple thinks they are irrelevant, useless or can be replaced).

Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Apple should go open-source or be more developer (and user) friendly: they target small and specific group of people who value design decions more than features or technical advantage and Apple is good at this.

P. S. `I suspect more due to the fact that they hate releasing a poor implementation of something’ — actually Apple has a long history of buggy first releases of their products.

Alexy Really? “Poor user experience”? Have you ever touched an iPhone? And last I checked, the iPhone could call, use 3G, do SMS messaging (witness the fact that I do several thousand a month). Yes, copy-paste is missing, but it is, having worked for Apple, I suspect more due to the fact that they hate releasing a poor implementation of something. Once they’ve figured out how to implement it in a way that is trivial for people to understand then I’m sure they will.

And the only open source phone to compare it to is the OpenMoko, and it’s a disaster of epic proportions. Truly mind-boggling bad, as though someone intentionally designed the worst phone in the world to prove you could.

The iPhone is far from perfect, but for a wide swath of people who need a high-functioning phone, it is the most perfect of all the options.

You mean someone will create a phone that can actually call, use 3G, send and recieve SMS, with copy-paste function available? Yeah, that’s not possible.

But you’re right that there is only one Steve Jobs with reality distortion field that can transform poor user experience into something that customers appreciate.

“Until then, Apple has opened the phone in nearly every way that matters.”

while i wouldn’t care to build the case for opening the phone, it seems clear that the iPhone application approval process is pretty fundamentally broken. the application store – 10,000 strong – is succeeding in spite of that development process, not because of it.

maybe the gate doesn’t need to be thrown all the way open, but the experiences of Google and others trying to get applications through the door would indicate that it, at least, should be more open than it is at present.

otherwise, solid points.