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A friend has sent you a link to the following article: http://mac360.com/index.php/mac360/comments/1093/ Can you remember when the Mac was first introduced in 1984? Were there ooohs and aaahs about the computer that changed the world? Plenty. For example, check some of these phrases used to describe the iPhone: PC Magazine - “takes the breath away.” CBS Late Show’s Craig Ferguson - “This is, this is… Wow!!... this is the biggest technological development since… curly fries.” Walt Mossberg - “made my relatively new Treo 700p seem primitive.” Real Money - “the major phone makers are now in even more serious trouble.” You get the idea. Complaints? Yes. {embed=“360admanager/content-rectangle-content-A-300x250”}Jack Gold in Computerworld - “Why am I not impressed?” How about the original iPod? Complaints? Plenty. How about the iPhone? Here they come, the first round of complaints. From what I can tell after scorching my eyes looking for every shred of news about Apple’s iPhone, it will be a big hit. Expensive. Yes. A hit? Yes. There are three major components that make up the eventual success of the iPhone. In no particular order—the user interface. There’s nothing like it. The size—iPod, phone, and internet communicator with WiFi crammed into an iPod size. The instant synchronization between iPhone and Mac or Windows PC. The headlines and TV news carried the iPhone’s birth as if it were the techno-messiah, perfect in every way, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound, eliminate hunger and sickness, and bring about world peace. I’ve read the reviews and watched the keynote on the Apple site. Twice. Yes, the iPhone is uber cool and everyone wants one. But it didn’t take much longer than 24-hours for the first complaints to roll through the door. First on the list was, “Where’s the removable battery?” That’s a legitimate issue, and I’d like to know if someone could interview Steve Jobs to find out. Other complaints were just plain silly. Others are more thoughtful. For example, besides modest battery life, where’s the iChat AV? Or, Skype? With WiFi that would be a killer app on a phone. The camera needs to swivel. Besides the battery, the single biggest complaint seems to be the choice of Cingular as the cell phone network of choice. That’s not your choice. Cingular isn’t everywhere, even in the US. Worse, there’s no word on what the two year contract with Cingular will cost. I do not think that’s an oversight. I do think we’ll get milked each month for 24 months. Why is there no way to upgrade the storage? After all, it’s just flash, right? When 16 gigabyte and 32 gigabyte chips hit the market, can we upgrade or do we buy a new phone? I have to pause and laugh about that whole memory issue. My first iMac circa 1998 had a 4 gigabyte hard drive. Now my iPod has 15 times that amount. Not so much a complaint, but a question that hasn’t been answered, is—how are contacts, addressbooks, phone numbers, and photos handled on Windows PCs via iTunes? Other questions being asked include screen durability, ruggedness, service, and so on. Make no mistakes. We will see plenty of debate for months before and after the iPhone is launched (regardless of whatever name is used).