[Note from Judie - Stan sent this opinion piece in while I was at the ranch this weekend. I think it is still relevant, so here you go...]

Hey iPhone owners-in a phrase, Apple today has screwed up. Call it as is. And I love my iPhone, my MacBook Air and just about everything Apple (see my previous posts on my love of the iPhone). Even if you have one business model that produces a widget with a fabulous end to end user experience based a beautifully married hardware & software, you can still screw up big time on huge promises that lack the back office capability to execute as planned. How many thousands of new iPhone owners are right now sitting at home with bricked iPhones?

This is not a good situation. Unlike last year’s original iPhone debut, this one had a 22 country worldwide rollout. If you promise thousands of people worldwide to sell them an iPhone on July 11th, shouldn’t you plan to have the technology available to close the deal? Apple expected long lines so they should of planned for thousands of activations today.

An Apple employee running crowd control said they were staying open until 11pm tonight to sell people iPhones. This line looked to be about 150 feet long with over 100 customers at about 7:30pm EST.

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Morning iPhone owners! Check out this article On Electronista about Siemens Nokia speeding up the Edge Data Network for GSM cell phones to 4 times current speeds!

In an unusual break from its emphasis on 3G and 4G cellular data, Nokia Siemens Networks today said it had developed a method to improve the speed of 2G networks. Called EGPRS 2, the subset of the future EDGE Evolution format adds a second carrier to the data path and promises to dramatically improve the practical speed of the connection in both directions.

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[Ed. note: Stan wrote this on his iPhone, so I have pretty much left it intact and unedited to allow him to make his point.]

I’m writing this on my iPhone b/c I’m on a 6pm subway ride and not in front of a PC. I could use a pocket pc phone oh- windows mobile phone - but I don’t b/c of what Apple gives me & Microsoft never has: a full, seamless enjoyable user experience. I’ve expounded on this before on Gear Diary but today I was trying to ponder, why? Why is Apple so much better at delivering on the true mobile experience?

I think it really comes down to the basic business models of the two companies and their cultures. Now I’m sure others have written much more detailed analyses on this subject so I’ll try to make it short. For example, while it’s true Apple took a very long time in developing the iPhone, it was time spent developing a user’s whole experience. That experience is how a person interacts with the phone’s hardware AND software. Apple is responsible for both and in total the whole package. We’ve read the stories about what Steve Jobs puts his folks through to get there: the long hours, the arguments, folks quitting their jobs just to get some sleep & then coming back to work. I’m sure there’s more. Apple is a company that truly cares about the user’s experience. That experience should add to a user’s life, make his life easier, more enjoyable and hopefully productive.

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Hi everyone. I’m going to try to give my thoughts on people’s reaction to Palm’s Foleo. Honestly, I’m really amazed by how seemingly angry and dismissive people are about the Foleo. It makes me wonder if something else is motivating such harsh responses.

I think about people’s response to Apple’s iPhone which, while not everyone feels this way, is that people have this anticipation about Jobs and Apple - almost a  “what is Apple going to do right next?” And this seems to be in contrast to, what I think, is the disappointment and frustration people have come to have over the years about Palm which seems to go something like “What is Palm not doing now?” or “how is Palm underwhelming us now?”

How do I feel about Palm? Well, I haven’t used a Palm or Treo since 2003. I’ve been using Pocket PC phones since that time (the i700 and then i730). I like the Palm Pilots but don’t trust their operating system. Too many anecdotal stories of Palm Treos resetting on their own. And then there’s the turtle like pace with which Palm seems to move to offer new innovations. So this in particular seems to be a big point of frustration for many people.

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Hi Gadget Geeks –I wrote Judie recently about the frustrating time I had living with a smartphone with a broken touch screen and she thought it would make a good Gear Diary story. Hope you can learn from my experience!

I’ve been a Pocket PC Phone Edition owner since the summer of 2003, when I bought a Samsung i700 for use with Verizon Wireless. I’ve been using various PDAs (mostly Pocket PCs and an M100 Palm Pilot) since 1999 when I first bought a Casio E-125. Currently, I own the Samsung i730 (bought July 2005) and it’s been a good run. Well, sufficed it to say that I love my i730-I really use it all the time to manage my work day and my personal life.

Whether it’s my banking contacts or the numerous meetings or deadlines I have to meet or managing what and where I’m meeting my girlfriend for our next date (sometimes even trying to figure out where that ladies’ shoe store is in Soho or the East Village or to find out if the engagement rings at Blue Nile are really nicer than Tiffany’s) or which doctor’s appointment I need to take Mom to, my i730 is there with pocket internet explorer, contacts, calendar and pocket word (so I can keep notes on how my girlfriend likes her hot chocolate and chai lattes at Starbucks ) to get me through the day. Thank goodness for pocket Google when you’re trying to find that elusive East Village Indian restaurant or need that pocket pc alarm to remind you of that 2pm meeting with your boss! Well, things came to a screeching stop a couple of Wednesdays ago during a busy day a the office - I had a very short lunch break before my next meeting (this was maybe the third of four that day) and I really needed to get to my desk and start eating and check my e-mail. Well, as I was rushing out of the restroom to get back to my desk, my i730, while in its case, fell off my belt to the floor with a sharp thud. I picked it up right away and thought nothing of it - I’ve dropped my phone about a half dozen times in the past. Well, I got back to my desk and took the phone out of its case and oh no, the touch screen was cracked! It looked like someone threw a rock at it - it still worked, right? Wrong! Parts of the touch screen worked but most of the screen wasn’t responsive - I could touch the screen to open the alarms screen but couldn’t cancel or set any new alarms and contacts would open but I couldn’t dial from it or edit any entries directly on the touch screen. In fact, the pocket pc worked fine but it was the touch screen that didn’t give me normal access anymore. The keyboard still worked but honestly, it’s a poor cumbersome substitute for the touch screen. What to do?

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