PressWatch: How to miss the point of the iPhone entirely...
31/01/07 22:55
Weckler ignores the keynote and most of the facts about the iPhone...
Following our earlier article on press coverage of the new iPhone, it was down to Adrian Weckler's Sunday Business Post column to miss the point of the new iPhone entirely. We are also sure that Weckler didn't sit down and watch the keynote, despite the fact that it is available on the internet and in iTunes.
Jobs clearly stated that a 3G version of the phone is on the cards. At present Apple have just announced the iPhone, and what we saw on Tuesday was a prototype. It was not the iPhone which will ship in the US in June. Given that Cingular in the US uses EDGE for data, Apple has announced it will ship a EDGE enabled iPhone in June in the US. Logical. He also stated that as 3G became more popular, Apple would look at the situation and may introduce a 3G version. Given that a date for the launch of the iPhone in Europe has not been finalised, it is highly likely that a 3G enabled iPhone will be the one that ships here at the end of 2007.
Other reporters, such as David Pogue of the New York Times, managed to include this fact in their reporting (Pogue mentions it twice in his iPhone FAQs- Part 1 and Part 2), so Weckler seems to to be unaware of what Jobs said, or deliberately left this out to create a more "controversial" story.
3G is the dominant standard in Europe and in Japan. At present Apple has no carrier lined up for either of these regions. Jobs' estimate was a roll out in Europe by the end of the year, and sometime in 2008 for Asia. Stating as Weckler did, that a lack of 3G will kill the iPhone in Europe, is both ill informed and far too premature.
Weckler's second point is the touch screen. He asks who wants to use a wipeable touch screen for making calls and texting. Well for a start, those who have actually seen the phone and tried it. Pogue, who attended a post keynote demo with Jobs, loves the touch sensitive nature of browsing the address book to find contacts or for browsing music. As for its use for SMS texting, we think only time will tell. No one has actually used or tested this yet. Pogue expresses some reservations about it, but points to both sides of the issue. First the bad. As we reported last week, the lack of buttons means the experience will be different, with no tactile feel when touching each letter. We think we will miss this. But on the positive side, the auto correct features goes some way to improve the existing method for SMS on phones. So, given that Weckler is damning a prototype he hasn't seen and hasn't used, we'll go with Pogue on this one.
Finally, Weckler makes his biggest mistake when he criticises Apple for having a touch sensitive QWERTY keyboard layout on the iPhone. What phones has Weckler been looking at over the last few years? Has he never seen a Treo, the number one smart phone in the US, or any smartphone with, well, a QWERTY keyboard on it? This seems blindingly obvious point which has bypassed him. Weckler believes that Apple could fix this by adding a real keypad to the iPhone, proving he hasn't watched the keynote, where Jobs spent time explaining the virtues of removing a physical keypad.
This level of reporting, especially paying little to no attention to the actual keynote announcement, seems to be very poor tech journalism. Damning a product before it is launched, in a region where it is unavailable until the end of the year, really stretches credibility.
Simon Spence/2007
Following our earlier article on press coverage of the new iPhone, it was down to Adrian Weckler's Sunday Business Post column to miss the point of the new iPhone entirely. We are also sure that Weckler didn't sit down and watch the keynote, despite the fact that it is available on the internet and in iTunes.
Jobs clearly stated that a 3G version of the phone is on the cards. At present Apple have just announced the iPhone, and what we saw on Tuesday was a prototype. It was not the iPhone which will ship in the US in June. Given that Cingular in the US uses EDGE for data, Apple has announced it will ship a EDGE enabled iPhone in June in the US. Logical. He also stated that as 3G became more popular, Apple would look at the situation and may introduce a 3G version. Given that a date for the launch of the iPhone in Europe has not been finalised, it is highly likely that a 3G enabled iPhone will be the one that ships here at the end of 2007.
Other reporters, such as David Pogue of the New York Times, managed to include this fact in their reporting (Pogue mentions it twice in his iPhone FAQs- Part 1 and Part 2), so Weckler seems to to be unaware of what Jobs said, or deliberately left this out to create a more "controversial" story.
3G is the dominant standard in Europe and in Japan. At present Apple has no carrier lined up for either of these regions. Jobs' estimate was a roll out in Europe by the end of the year, and sometime in 2008 for Asia. Stating as Weckler did, that a lack of 3G will kill the iPhone in Europe, is both ill informed and far too premature.
Weckler's second point is the touch screen. He asks who wants to use a wipeable touch screen for making calls and texting. Well for a start, those who have actually seen the phone and tried it. Pogue, who attended a post keynote demo with Jobs, loves the touch sensitive nature of browsing the address book to find contacts or for browsing music. As for its use for SMS texting, we think only time will tell. No one has actually used or tested this yet. Pogue expresses some reservations about it, but points to both sides of the issue. First the bad. As we reported last week, the lack of buttons means the experience will be different, with no tactile feel when touching each letter. We think we will miss this. But on the positive side, the auto correct features goes some way to improve the existing method for SMS on phones. So, given that Weckler is damning a prototype he hasn't seen and hasn't used, we'll go with Pogue on this one.
Finally, Weckler makes his biggest mistake when he criticises Apple for having a touch sensitive QWERTY keyboard layout on the iPhone. What phones has Weckler been looking at over the last few years? Has he never seen a Treo, the number one smart phone in the US, or any smartphone with, well, a QWERTY keyboard on it? This seems blindingly obvious point which has bypassed him. Weckler believes that Apple could fix this by adding a real keypad to the iPhone, proving he hasn't watched the keynote, where Jobs spent time explaining the virtues of removing a physical keypad.
This level of reporting, especially paying little to no attention to the actual keynote announcement, seems to be very poor tech journalism. Damning a product before it is launched, in a region where it is unavailable until the end of the year, really stretches credibility.
Simon Spence/2007
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