“Apple’s new iPhone could do to the cell phone market what the iPod did to the portable music player market: crush it pitilessly beneath the weight of its own superiority. This is unfortunate for anybody else who makes cell phones, but it’s good news for those of us who use them.”—Lev Grossman, Time
“At first blush, it’s the gadget-lover’s ‘genie in a bottle’ fantasy: get three wishes fulfilled in only one wish. But like a mischievous genie, Apple has left us wanting more: a wicked video iPod with trifling storage capacity, a super smartphone that will need to be shipped back for battery replacement, and an highly visual web device that may choke on data when used on Cingular’s current cell phone network. And then there are the prices, known and unknown. Perhaps by design, it will cause envy, yet immediately require successors.”—Jeremy Horwitz, iLounge
“At $499 and $599, it’s a pretty expensive deal. Steve is more focused on not cannibalizing iPod sales than on driving volume of phones. Those are not high-volume prices.”—Rob Glaser, CEO of Real Networks
“I don’t know a single person that likes the phone they have. Everyone feels like a victim of both their phone plan and their phone hardware. Cellphones seem to be one of those things that barely works given all the drawbacks.
The iPhone isn’t just a new gadget. It looks like something that will transform the way we think about cellphones.”—Matt Haughey, A Whole Lotta Nothing
“From what Jobs showed Tuesday, the iPhone really does look to be five years ahead of what anyone else has got. Maybe longer. It’s taken rivals five years to catch up with the iPod, which now looks hopelessly outdated and crippled compared to the iPhone.”—Leander Kahney, Wired News
“There’s an interesting tradeoff presented by the iPhone. While the phone can do more, and it’s interface is fluid, in some ways it widens the gulf between human and computer. When you touch it it doesn’t touch you back.”—Jason Fried, 37signals
“This goes beyond smart phones and should be given its own category called ‘brilliant’ phones. Cell phones are on track to become the largest platform for digital music playback, and Apple needed to make this move to help defend their iPod franchise as well as extend it beyond a dedicated music environment.”—Tim Bajarin, Creative Strategies
“It’s not just candy. These are entirely useful, new ways to use your phone.”—Mike McGuire, Gartner
“This thing will go through the roof, exactly according to Apple’s master plan. Prepare for a replay of the iPod lifecycle: other cellphone companies will rush out phones that match the iPhone’s feature list, but will fail to appreciate the importance of elegant, effortless, magical-feeling software.”—David Pogue, New York Times
“We are focused on the ‘pro-sumer’ and business customer, where e-mail, Microsoft Outlook and easy text entry for messaging and Web navigation is required.
A full QWERTY keyboard is essential, so you can compose and edit documents fast and round-trip them back to the office rather than trying to navigate a cursor up and down and sideways.”—Marlene Somsak, Palm spokeswoman
“What you cannot appreciate looking at iPhone photographs on your computer display is how amazing its screen is. 166 DPI is an amazing resolution—tiny, tiny text is amazingly legible. And the device itself is very thin. The battery policy, though, is exactly like that of other iPods: it’s sealed inside the case, and is not swappable.”—John Gruber, Daring Fireball
“Prospects for the new device are positive, but it is not a given that Apple can win against a slew of wireless providers, phone manufacturers, and Microsoft, all of whom are similarly motivated to raise their flag on the same territory.”—James L. McQuivey, Boston University professor
“At the risk of playing into the hype of the iPhone, seeing is believing with this device.”—Gene Munster, Piper Jaffray
“Apple’s bothersome tradition of non-user-servicable batteries continues. There’s no reason to do this, frankly, aside from the kind of implied ‘we’re aesthetic obsessives’ claim that Apple still gets away with.”—Rob Beschizza, Wired
“This product could not have been done two years ago and come to market the way that it has. Yes, I know other devices can do a lot of what the iPhone can do but that’s like saying there’s a lot of other music players out there as well.”—Michael Gartenberg, Jupiter Research
“It just confirms our message, and it’s good to have others preaching the same message. The best company will win in the end, so I think it’s good news for us. It’s not a threat, although of course it’s hard competition, but that usually makes you perform better yourself.”—Pekka Pohjakallio, VP of Nokia Nseries Computers
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