Pogue on iPhone

In our house, David Pogue is a guru. We buy his books, debate his articles, watch his show...his word might as well be gospel. And how does he feel about the iPhone? He doesn't hate it. Excellent!!!

"As it turns out, much of the hype and some of the criticisms are justified. The iPhone is revolutionary; it’s flawed. It’s substance; it’s style. It does things no phone has ever done before; it lacks features found even on the most basic phones."

It seems AT&T's agreement to let Apple revamp the way cell phones work allowed for some interesting touches, including adding the option of purchasing a plan online and pricing for cheaper internet access. As for the utility: answering a call is easy, checking your voice mail is easy (no calling required), playing music is easy, making a call is a pain, typing on the keyboard is a pain, checking your email is "fantastic," and the web browser is dazzling.

"But the bigger achievement is the software. It’s fast, beautiful, menu-free, and dead simple to operate. You can’t get lost, because the solitary physical button below the screen always opens the Home page, arrayed with icons for the iPhone’s 16 functions."

Though it's not quite a GPS because it can't tell you where you are, you can find locations on maps...next best thing. And for the road warriors out there, free live traffic reports with color coded roads on maps.

Other stuff to consider: hard to scratch screen, mediocre battery life (I'm still bitter about my first iPod), no memory card slots, no chat programs (sorry, Yahoo), no video recording, no sending pictures to other phones...NO WAY!!

AT&T's cell coverage sounds terrible, as does the internet access when using "AT&T’s ancient EDGE cellular network, which is excruciatingly slow." Ugh.

"In other words, maybe all the iPhone hype isn’t hype at all. As the ball player Dizzy Dean once said, 'It ain’t bragging if you done it.'"

So, we're still not getting one, but I'm perfectly willing to covet yours.