waffle

Paul Thurrott is no stranger to rightfully pointing out that MobileMe sucks. Today, he links to Walt Mossberg, who like most reasonable people summarize that MobileMe is a hotter (the UI is well-designed and the name is… well, it’s not “.Mac”), but still ultimately non-functional version of .Mac.

What gets me about Paul Thurrott is that he’s acting like Mac users with anything above half a brain will stoop to Apple-defending name calling unless he says everything’s perfect. Paul’s recently started using the term “iCabal” (which when it comes to originality, rhetorical strength and good old maturity is right up there with, say, “Micro$oft”) to describe his idea of the majority of Mac users. I’m not denying that maybe Paul gets a ton of mail from these stereotypical asshats, but he’d do well to not apply their ideas to the rest of us. (Pun not intended.)

Capcom to actually release Mega Man 9. Even better, it’s in the style of Mega Man 1 through 6 and is WiiWare (Wii’s buy-download-and-play system).

Took them long enough. Everything after, and including, Mega Man X has been gigantic disappointments; perhaps excluding Mega Man Powered Up, which was for the PSP ensuring no one that’d actually like it ever got to play it.

(Setting: Early 2007.)

World: Where’s our 3G? Also, GPS.

Steve Jobs: Well, 3G chipsets would kill the battery life.

World: Oh, bullshit.

(Setting: Mid-2008.)

Steve Jobs: Due to popular request, our new iPhone will have 3G! Also, GPS.

World: Awesome.

(Time passes.)

World: Hey, what’s up with the battery life?

I agree strongly with DHH: iPhone 2.0 is a bust. There are bugs, there is lag in the UI (especially the Contacts) and there’s plain instability everywhere. I notice this mostly because iPhone 1.1.4 didn’t behave this way at all, it was, and it still is incredibly fluid, and I know so because I’ve compared just now with my GSM iPhone and the iPhone 3G side-by-side, and it’s just no contest. Interesting, since the GSM iPhone was jailbroken, unlocked and rim-stuffed with custom applications. (It didn’t even “bring down Cingular’s west coast network”.)

This sucks. Even with the new features, it’s enough to put a dent in the entire experience. I can’t believe that this was in public beta for three months and wasn’t fixed. If I were to guess, I’d say that if Apple had had GSM iPhone stock left when announcing iPhone 3G, they would have announced a later date to allow for more bug fixing, but they couldn’t since they were already out of stock. (Then again, this assumes Apple has a competent QA staff, a concept which has from time to time come into question.)

Obviously, this will only last so long until there’ll be clear fixes for these issues. (2.0.1; before mid-August, if not before August already.) However, combined with MobileMe issues, an opening day activation server stability record that would make Twitter architectural interns snort and giggle, a lack of sufficient hardware and a reluctancy to push app updates to improve stability, it means that many of the 21 launch country customers will have been left with a profoundly bad taste about the whole thing. “Apple,” they’ll tell their friends, “may be able to do iPods, but they can’t do phones.”