13 Early Criticisms, Doubts, and Disses About the iPhone

By the time the iPhone was released on June 29, 2007, Apple was already in the midst of an incredible decade-long revival under Steve Jobs. Entering a crowded mobile phone market was a risk, but their new product outperformed even the most optimistic predictions and it would eventually help Apple become the richest company in the world (going by market cap).

Most technology experts knew the iPhone was going to be a hit even before they got their hands on it when it was first announced earlier that year. Small issues were noted (like its high price and the fact that it was only available through one wireless carrier) but, by and large, the hype and excitement drummed up by the media turned out to be appropriate in hindsight.

In the wrong hands, however, hindsight can be a dangerous tool. It can, for example, be used to find the few people who publicly poo-pooed the iPhone when it first came out. It's almost unfair, then, that these doubts about the most popular consumer electronics product of the past half-century can be itemized in a neat little list some eight years after they were expressed. Even more cruel is that this can be done by someone like me, who loudly called the iPhone "stupid" to anyone who would listen back in 2007. However, I didn't have a platform to publish those views at the time (and if I did, they weren't archived), so I am exempt from any retroactive chuckles.

Here are 13 of them.

1. "The iPhone doesn't go on sale until June in the U.S. and possibly not until next year here, so why worry, if you need a phone now? BlackBerry Pearls are mighty fine."

2. "Apple's decision to make the iPhone a closed system that third parties won't be allowed to write software for is stupid."

—Stephen Ballantyne, writing in New Zealand's National Business Review.

3. "Is it really as stuffed with innovative features as Steve Jobs made it sound from the stage at Macworld Expo last week? Nah. Most of those features have been around in one form or another for years. Apple just put them all together."

4. "Widescreen pocket media player? Been done. Handheld Web browser? Been done. Quad-band GSM phone? Been done, in almost every way imaginable. Camera? Wi-Fi? Bluetooth? Old news. Even the all-touch-screen phone interface Jobs gushed over ('We're going to use the best pointing device in our world—we're born with 10 of them, our fingers') has been around since 2001."

5. "But does Apple know what users will actually do with the iPhone? Nope."

—Frank Hayes in Computerworld.

6. "Apple's real problem may be that the new iPhone, like its namesake, is a solution in search of a problem."

7. "If Jobs tied a couple of tin cans together with a string and called it a telephone, a million Macolytes would call him a 'visionary minimalist' and shell out $500 for it."

8. "The more gadgets you cram into one package, the more things there are to go wrong—and the more likely it is that something will ... Do you really want your business communications dependent on the health of your music player?"

—Mike Himowitz, writing in the Baltimore Sun. Himowitz was not helped by the headline Newsday decided to use with this syndicated piece: "New Multifeature iPhone Not Likely to be a Huge Hit." (It was "Steve Jobs Has More Selling to do on iPhone" in the Sun).

Himowitz had one more crack at the iPhone after he had tried it out for "a few weeks" and conceded that "the iPhone is, indeed, a fantastic gadget—a stunning example of industrial design that borders on art." Still, he wasn't convinced...

9. "The iPhone has two serious flaws. First, it's awkward to handle. At 4 1/2 by 2 3/8 inches, it's half an inch wider than my regular cell phone—too wide to hold comfortably. And the iPhone is slippery—too easy to drop."

10. "The on-screen keyboard was too small for my big fingers and lacked the tactile feedback that makes the tiny, thumb-based keyboards on other PDAs usable. A stylus with handwriting recognition software would be a great addition to future models."

11. "I still wouldn't buy one for everyday use. In fact, most of us can get the iPhone's most important bennies from a newer Apple toy that's a better value—the iPod Touch."

—From "Stunning iPhone, Alas, Has Big Flaws", published October 25, 2007 in the Baltimore Sun.

12. "To summarize: the iPhone is expensive and fails miserably at its primary function of making telephone calls, but other than that it's really great. Sign me up!"

—Kevin Drum in Washington Monthly, quipping on an aside from a separate (positive) review of the iPhone.

13. "We like our strategy. We're selling millions and million and millions of phones a year. Apple is selling zero phones. In six months they'll have the most expensive phone by far ever in the marketplace."

—Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer talking about whether or not the iPhone will be a worthy competitor to the Windows Phone in an interview with CNBC.