Ha, it's definitely not an excellent experience end-to-end according to the friends who've bought iPhones, especially 3g. The first end involved lines at the Apple store, bricked phones, arcane activation procedures.
Most of that involved over excited early adopters. This is a bad strawman. Most folks over the last year (for 2g) did not experience any of this at all.
I don't understand why anyone takes Matt seriously, everything he writes is very trollish. He's some sort of Apple bigot.[1]
I've seen him claim that Apple's "service is atrocious" yet their service is consistently ranked at the top.[2][3] Other times, he'll give some lame anecdote about his friend's MacBook constantly needing repair or receiving bricked iPhones. I have no idea if those stories are true, but if we made a poll, I think we'd find that he's exaggerating.
Once a troll in the poker world, today he's moved to this little corner of the Internet. Matt: we still hate your online persona.[4]
It's interesting how easily people are subjected to ad hominem attacks if they dare to criticise Apple. There are unhappy Apple customers. Count my vote. And just because Apple censors their own message boards doesn't mean they should be able to count on their "loyal followers" to oppress opinion elsewhere.
I don't want to defend Apple. Infact, I don't even use their products. My point is that he's as guilty as an Apple fanboy, except he's a member of the Apple haters' cult.
Some of his posts above about Apple products are just not factual. There have not been widespread issues with bricked iPhones nor have people been returning them in droves like he's claimed. I'd imagine that you could make the same exaggerations about the Motorola RAZR. There are always defective products from the factory and people who return them; the numbers are not any higher with the iPhone.
I don't think it's fair to dismiss Apple as hype.[1] Let's give them credit for creating some very well designed products and hate them for the right reasons.
People take me seriously because my arguments are well-reasoned and well-written. People mistake me for trollish because they are very direct. For instance, the 4th one you cited objected to the use of the word "retard" to describe someone who did something very dumb. If only I were as smart as Ben Stiller I would have somehow made millions off of it.
I have to admit, I've been called a lot of stuff, but you're the first person to actually back it up with citations. Only on Hacker News..,
Eh, you might be right in that it's not entirely typical, but it's a pretty significant chunk of their users. There have been many other problems as well, especially with the 3g model. Lots of people have been returning them.
My point wasn't to enumerate its flaws, but rather to point out that it's far from all roses in terms of owner experience.
