iReviews

26iphone600
So I spent some time this morning reading the iReviews. Apple let Walt Mossberg, David Poque, Steven Levy and several other tech journalists have an iPod iPhone for the past couple weeks. Given all the iPod iPhone hype, I am surprised none of these journalists had stories of beating back the crowds during their two week preview. Ryan Block’s got a good rundown of the new facts that are coming out as a result of these test drives.

The most interesting comments came from Walt, who liked the keyboard:

The iPhone’s most controversial feature, the omission of a physical
keyboard in favor of a virtual keyboard on the screen, turned out in
our tests to be a nonissue, despite our deep initial skepticism. After
five days of use, Walt — who did most of the testing for this review
— was able to type on it as quickly and accurately as he could on the
Palm Treo he has used for years. This was partly because of smart
software that corrects typing errors on the fly.

But other facts like the lack of search and cut and paste indicate to me that this phone is still not business ready (thought it might be people ready).

I suppose I should get one to play around with it. If it’s easy enough to do, I’ll probably do it. But I won’t be one of the millions who will be lined up tomorrow/iDay to get one.

I am still in love with my Curve.

UPDATE: Sorry about calling the iPhone an iPod twice in this post. Must be a freudian slip of some kind. I wonder if there are people who will get an iPhone and only use it for music and browsing. I could be one of them. Maybe that was my subconscious working.

UPDATE: Dave Budde left a link to this in the comments. In this case, a video is way better than any other review I’ve seen. Well done NY Times.

#VC & Technology