Could we not reprint the asshattery that is John Dvorak? The man specializes in making shit up to piss people off, and that's about it.

Anyone still excited about getting a $600+ CELLPHONE?

maybe jobs sent him a "special" model for everything his has done for apple.

@exkon: Give me a break, dude. I'm with Plaid Rabbit on this one. What a ridiculous rumor. I can't imagine a company releasing a phone at that price point knowing full well that forty minutes of talk time is all it's capable of.

I also agree with Plaid Rabbit. This is a stupid submission for Consumerist. Any bit of elementary Google work can illuminate what Dvorak himself has admitted: He enjoys tweaking Apple fans for attention.

His recent piece of drivel stated he believed Apple should abandon the iPhone because it will be a loser. It was supported by nothing other than assumption and a severe lack of freshman introduction to business acumen.

Why bother posting this stuff? Well, I will say I really like the photo mash-up. But the content is worthless, guys.

I'll also add, Ben, that it's odd for you to jump on his factless, baseless bandwagon by suggesting people wait a few months because it "could portend similar product defects". Really shows a lack of curiosity to determine whether this stuff is real in the first place.

Don't wreck your credibility just to pile on with the Anti-Apple crap, Ben.

And even if it wasn't Dvorak tweaking Apple fans, this is still just a rumor about an unreleased product. The source might have been working with a prototype. Perhaps they are currently working on extending battery life right now.

Surprising consumerist post

I didn't know we had so many Apple fan boys in this site.

Exactly.

The numerous problems with the iPhone 1.0 are well known to anyone views Engadget, CNET or Slashdot. So ease off the Koolaid there people.

While I love iTunes and my Nano, the iPhone's specs, costs, massive restrictions on use and carrier (many of these problems are directly the result of Cingular's meddling). No 3G. No Third party apps. Its oversized. No VOIP. No WIFI.

Hopefully Apple learns from the "Newton 2.0" and gets it right before Google launches their competing interface/software design.

It's not a case of Apple fanboydom - this is just an unsubstantiated rumor and has little if nothing to do with the actual product. Of COURSE Rev. A products are buggy, and of COURSE early adopters should approach with trepidation. But that doesn't make dignifying random rumors with a post to this blog any more credible.

I'm with the masses on this one. Let's wait and see, shall we? Luckily for the iPhone haters, there's a simple, no-cost solution to your gripes: don't buy one.

Dvorak is a troll. Please don't feed the trolls.

Gee John, isn't nice to know that no one is going to bother to call you out on this comment once the iPhone launches . . . no one will even remember it and your status as "intel tech guru" will remain unscathed. Sweet!

Dvorak is a troll, plain and simple...

elf6c,
The iPhone has wifi, and connects to Teh Internets automatically via wifi when an access point is in range.

I think this article is pretty irresponsible: to damn a product that is still in development from a reputable company is just unfair. If Apple were known to release crappy products then perhaps this would be good information to have. If you think Apple will really release a $500 phone that is buggy and has only 40 minutes of talk time, then think again.

Honestly, I am not going to buy an iPhone because I just don't care about phones that much and I think it's too expensive. However, I am an Apple fan because they make great products.

Uhhh..yeah. This is the same Dvorak who gives a step by step explanation in the video below on how to tweak Apple fan boys in order to increase hits to his web site:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=SAWDYaWAVQQ

Slow news day.

At least one thing I've heard more than once is that you can't remove and replace the battery on your own. If that holds into the released product, then I wouldn't touch it. I've got a Treo 650 right now and when I travel or go to long meetings, I carry a spare battery with me. Even with good battery life, you can burn through it in about six hours or so of use. Having the ability to swap it out in a few seconds has been a lifesaver more than once.

I've been using Macs since 1985, and I wouldn't buy v.1.0 of any Apple product.

segfault- good catch. Sorry, I meant in the Skype/VOIP and any other unlimited use of WiFi that most laptop users take for granted.

Also, how much of that will Cingular lock out for "security" purposes while charging you to use only their data plans? Like the Nerfed bluetooth features and current web access allowances- caveat emptor.

I love the idea of the iPhone, I just despise the current Cingular based destruction of the phone's promise.

Having seen some of the amazing all-in ones they are rocking in Korea and Japan- I know the tech is out there, but the carrier's stranglehold on the US market and compliant regulators mean no soup for us.

FWIW: Calling Dvorak a troll is a bit much IMHO. He has strong opinions on things which I prefer (right or wrong he at least takes a stand). Its his refusal to fess up on his misses and bad guesses which hurts his credibility.

Cheers.

@elf6c: People call Dvorak a troll for two reasons.

1. He will often willfully base his "opinions" on demonstrably false infomation.
2. He has gone on record saying that he comes up with inflammatory material with the express purpose of angering Mac users. (Not that anybody ever had any doubts.)

That's the definition of a troll. You say "right or wrong, he at least takes a stand." I would place the emphasis on "at least" there. Taking a stand is easy. Taking an informed, well-reasoned stand is something more.

Planned obsolescence?

John Dvorak is well-known for his anti-Apple trolls. This particular one is based on an unsourced, probably out-of-the-loop (if he exists) Cingular person. Consumerist should exercise better judgement, or at least have a phat disclaimer pointing out the perils.

In DvorakLand, iPod was doomed to fail, the transition from 68k to PPC would break Apple, likewise PPC to Intel, Apple itself was doomed since it's product line was more expensive than a sub-basement, bottom-of-the-barrel, stripped-down PC... I could go on.

NOT to say that iPhone shouldn't be viewed critically. Cutting some slack considering it's a 1.0 and breaking much new ground. But let's be careful about who we give Consumerist megaphone too. Let it be an honor, not a given.

It's been said already, but I will reiterate (and I say this as someone who has had plenty of friendly conversations and even some good career advice from him): Dvorak said it. That's how you know it's not true.

It's common sense to wait a while before purchasing the newest, greatest gadget. Everything needs time for bugs to be worked out, etc. I think Ben is giving pretty decent advice on waiting to purchase the iPhone. Look at the Razr..it's now $39, down from over $100 a year ago. Cell phones are almost disposable now. Any conscientious consumer would wait to purchase a phone priced as high as the iPhone. Who knows, maybe Apple is rushing into the market and the phone will have issues.

John Dvorak is the Bill O'Reilly of technology.

Take this with a grain of salt.

Actually, back up a truckload of salt and dump it on this "rumor".

Well MY inside source at Cingular told me that the iPhone gets 2 years of talk time without charging because it uses a piezoelectric motor that absorbs Earth's natural vibrations.

Putting that aside, how is this in any way a consumerist issue? Even if what Dvorak said was totally true (yeah, right), why does this belong on the Consumerist? The story was "Unreleased product has shitty battery life" not "Apple lies about iPhone's battery life, refuses returns" or something like that.

Popken, please think before you post.

Okay, rumour or not..

Where is it justified in spending $600+ for a cellphone. Hell people complain about a the prie of the PS3.

I don't even know for certain who Dvorak is, but The iPod was kinda of a let down, and it's how I learned the term "planned obsolescence". Cell phones are the banner obsolescence product though, and well, an Apple phone is next? What's after that, an Apple Digital TV too?

The author of Made to Break, Giles Slade, calls Steve Jobs the new Darth Vader in this interview. He is more concerned with the environment ipact of this practice. Is nobody else agitated by expensive products breaking every 12-18 months?

The iPod is bad garbage

"Your book seems to give Apple a reasonably positive treatment. But what about the allegations that the iPod is engineered to die after 18 months or so?

Steve Jobs came out recently and pretty much admitted that the iPod should be thought of as a disposable product. It is a slick, sleek thing, and you would never consider that it comes from a fundamentally dirty industry. In fact, the amount of toxins that go into an iPod is enormous. There are more than 68 million of these things out there, and they are full of cadmium, beryllium and lead. And Apple has deliberately created them so they only last a year. The company has a voluntary take-back program, but how many people use it? They won't say. I am hugely personally disappointed in Steve Jobs. He turned into Darth Vader.

But the real Darth Vader in your book isn't Steve Jobs, it's the mobile phone, which you explain is now on roughly a 12-month product life-cycle. You have given all the cellphone holdouts a whole new set of reasons to feel smug.

I do own a cell phone, a Motorola flip-phone. It is a wonderful device, but I plan to hang on to it for a long time. Cellphones are now deliberately underbuilt: They are so closely linked to style and fashion, that manufacturers realize people want to trade them in after a year or so, and so they make them to break. Some manufacturers are being smarter about it. Ericsson has designed a prototype cellphone that uses a process called "metal memory" to disassemble itself when you are finished with it. When it receives a signal from its owner, it will take itself apart into distinct recyclable components. Motorola makes a phone that contains a sunflower seed. Obviously nobody is going to plant the phone in the garden, but it illustrates a point that it should be disposed of properly."

There is also this article about broken iPod owners. Link. Yet no one can say just how widespread it is.

I am very surprised by our tolerance for this annoying and sometimes expensive practice.

How quickly everyone seems to have forgotten about the non-removable iPod battery fiasco. Those batteries started off great and soon ended up at pretty much the same use time as this (40 min). An integral battery on a high-use high-tech device is never a good idea.

Fear
Uncertainty
Doubt

@informer: Ben IS thinking before he posts. He is thinking this is sure to hit Digg's front page and drive 20,000 views to the site by tomorrow morning.

FUD? Microsoft has a phone?

Christ, people. Get a grip. Ben posted it as a 'rumor', which is the first word in the friggin' title of the post. don't like rumors? don't 'read more'. Don't like Dvorak, disregard after reading it. No reason to clog the comments with your useless whining and attacks on the ConEd.

@elf6c: Yes because they have all had hands on... OH WAIT NO ONE HAS EVEN FUCKING TOUCHED A IPHONE.

There are no numerous problems, because no one has even reviewed it yet aside from the beta units at MacWorld, months before FCC approval and release. While I am sure there are bugs, its obviously working well enough for Steve "24 hour work days" Jobs to be using it as his phone.

this is a good article for the consumerist even if it is a rumor, which the title clearly stated

Apple purposely makes products that are sub-standard in their first iteration, and their fanbase (aka paying pilot users) eat it up. It would be more of an issue if the people Apple screws the most, didn't love it blindly.

Dvorak doesn't realize that the phone absorbs "smug" from the user and converts it into energy. WTG Apple!

How can anybody defend a phone with a built-in battery? Come on people...wake up! BUILT IN BATTERY

Dvorak is frequently wrong.

http://www.roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM.Tech.Q2.07/23659F71-1...

I'd trust macrumors before dvorak. Nobody with this juicy of a rumor goes to dvorak, honestly.

Just to clear it up. The iPhone does NOT have wifi internet access. In fact I don't even think it has 3G.

Waste of money!

I'll seriously laugh everytime I see someone with one.

This tech-geek wannabe (Dvorak) is actually some great free advertising for Apple. Give me a break, even people that hate Apple have to admit that they don't believe Apple would put out a phone with 40min talk time.

As far as no wi-fi, what's the use if you've got a full time data connection!

considering the iPod was panned when it came out, I'd be real careful about trying to jump the gun.

Dvorak needs eyeballs to read his stories. Whenever some flamer opens his mouth, everyone stops to tell him to shut up. It's human nature.

OK, first of all, repeat after me:
The.
iPhone.
Has.
Wi-Fi.

Don't believe me? Look here:
http://www.apple.com/iphone/technology/wireless.html

Second, Dvorak is a hack. As someone said: the O'Reilly of the computer industry. If he told me the sky was blue, I'd have to look up and check.

Third: Read, people! R-U-M-O-R. No one outside of Apple and a few lucky tech media insiders have touched an iPhone. And they one they have is a prototype that's not even FCC approved yet. There are bugs to work out yet, I'm certain.

And if you hate the iPhone so much, do us all a favor- don't buy one. Don't so much as look at it.

40 something posts and I'm contributing to the madness.

Apple will always do better with a second generation. By that time, the first gen will be pretty affordable and a little more stable.

Don't buy anything hot of the grill, they haven't even gotten the chance to put the sauce on it.

Oh. Yea. And this Dee-vor-ack guy is a troll. He might need to starve.

oldbluebox: "Just to clear it up. The iPhone does NOT have wifi internet access."

oldbluebox, that's incorrect. The iPhone's wireless features include 802.11b/g, EDGE, and Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR. (The initial release won't support 3G because, according to Apple and Cingular, Cingular doesn't have wide enough 3G coverage for it to make sense right now. 3G support is planned for future versions once Cingular's 3G network fills out.)

All of these comments and only one thing needs to be said:
Those are two reasons the phone isn't released yet, dip shits. Yes, Dip Shits. I'm sick of people whining about beta products, and... holy crap, now people are whining about unreleased products.

Why you go vote that the RIAA is a worse company than ExxonMobil; then punch yourself in the face repeatedly.

He definitely has a point about buying products like this with embedded battery power, instead of batteries you can change out. I never understood that and it seems the only explanation is planned obsolescence.

It doesn't affect the members of the "culture of Mac" since they seem to buy off the shelf, toss, and replace off the shelf their products more frequently. (Seriously, I read some guy saying he buys a new Mac about every year. WTF?)

Also, touch screen really isn't new. My Treo has one. I don't use it because a.) I'm anal about smudge marks on my cell phone screen and b.) one you put your $600 trendy jewel in a protective chalice, it's a bit harder to tap those virtual buttons.

And I don't even use my Treo (with all the Wifi, Bluetooth, Browser, software, etc. that I only use when I wanna check email on the road) as much as my basic Nokia phone. Sometimes it's nice to have something that simply calls, receives calls, remembers numbers and sends/receives text messages. And I can reaplce the battery on both phones.

I guess it's just a different way of looking at consumer technology. Be seen being the first person with a much hyped product! If it feels good, do it.

Its rumors. Id wait till version 2.0 comes out for the iphone. ya know, so they can fix the non-replaceable battery. Look at the first few gens of the ipods, where the battery crapped out after a few hours. or if you kept that gen ipod for a while, the battery wouldnt charge. Or the treo 600 where that one didnt have a replaceable battery. im just saying wait till the 2nd gen iphone to come out. but as a first gen gadget freak myself, id probably get the iphone when it comes it. It is a disease I tell you!! :)