Sure, I'm somewhat skeptical of the iPhone...

...but next time I'd write a story that doesn't sound quite so much like a 'sour grapes', 'I asked Steve Jobs for an interview and he turned me down' reaction.

I mean, really, implying that Jobs doesn't face hostile interviewers? That's well known. Neither do any other heads of industry in the US these days, nor does our President any more. But sure, Jobs is much more scrupulous about his vetting than anyone else that I know of who isn't currently in the US Government. (In the current government, the only person who ever faces hostile interviewers is our favorite-ist press secretary since the last press secretary, who simply lies every time he's given a question he doesn't like.)

Implying that Apple is putting out Google acquisition rumors in order to up their stock price? That's what we call 'being a d*ck'. And don't say that's not what you were implying, because if it's not, then you're a lousy writer. And you're not.

And it's always nice to hear the press weigh in on a new Apple product. I'll put your predictions of failure on the iPhone on the pile along with the predictions of failure of every major Apple product by a wide variety of 'journalists' over the years. I'd say the voice of common wisdom (if one can stretch to call it that) has had about the same record of successfully predicting such things in Apple's case as, say, a coin toss would. (Newton? Right, finally. iMac? Wrong. Pippin? Ever so right. iPod? Wrong. PowerMac G4 Cube? Quite correct. Mac OS X? Dead wrong.)

-fred