If I buy a product, then *I* give a <your word, not mine> about what I
want. Your questions are only relevant if the person buying the product
wants every option available. And quite frankly I don't. Let's take cars
for example: I have a comfortable three-door hatchback. Does it go 0 to
60 in 4 seconds? No. But I don't care if it did. I wouldn't drive it
that way even so. Does it have a Hemi engine. Once again, No, but I
don't care. The 5-cylinder VW engine works just fine for me.

Just because some new gadget doesn't have EVERY little feature doesn't
make it bad. Sometimes less is more.

So far, I've found my iPhone satisfactory for what *I* want. And I'm
sick and tired of people like you trying to tell me what I *should* want.

I want simplicity, I want reliability, I want value for my money. It's
why I buy Glock, why I buy VW, and why I buy Apple.

I've got a few discouraging words. I'm a realist not a politician trying
to make everyone happy.

I can't see the screen half the time. There's apparently no way to
increase the text and icon size for older people like myself that would
appreciate that sort of thing.

The EDGE and 3G coverage in my area isn't very good.

The screen smears way too much. But I've had that problem with every
phone. Even my ancient Nokia got skin oils all over it if I used it more
than a couple times. Gently clean with a soft rag and it's fine.

Calm down. You're going to give yourself a heart attack.

You obviously didn't read my whole post. It was a GIFT from my kids! And
I'm too poor to afford to get another phone on my own income.

Not everyone here buys their phones out of their own pocket. Some
inherit something older as a hand-me-down. Some have them assigned to
them through their employer. And some, like me, are lucky enough to have
one as a gift.

My kids thought that the touch screen would be easier to use than
pressing a bunch of little buttons. And so far, it does seem to be
easier on my arthritic hands. As I've said before, my main compliant is
the size of the pictures and text on the screen. Too small for old eyes.
I'm not a teenager anymore.

Changing the text size in the e-mail app doesn't help with all the other
apps, nor with the home screen--which you have to use to get to the mail
app.

While some of his opinions, and the conclusions he draws, are questionable
(though often humorous), most of his FACTS are correct.  

But I'm not at all surprised by your statement- there seems to be problem
with several posters here distinguishing between opinion and fact.

Sure, Larry was wrong about the GPS chip in the iPhone Jr., (based on the
early teardowns referenced here)  but he admitted his error when more
accurate info surfaced.  

Even in today's "visit to the AT&T store" post, for example, he never said
the iPhone's WiFi _couldn't_ be shut off- just that neither he nor the
salesperson couldn't find the menu to do it, (then he launched into a
typical, and ridiculous, Larry conspiracy theory as to why AT&T wouldn't
want you to shut it off.)  So, incorrect conclusions and ridiculous
opinions?  Yes.  Incorrect facts?  No.  

Agreed, if we're talking about "facts," yes.  Again, however, the
difficulty here seems to be identifying the difference between facts and
opinion (just like on Fox News, ironically!)  

The balance of OPINION from multiple viewpoints, however, can be very
valuable, much like movie reviews- if Roger Ebert likes most of the same
movies as I did, and for the same reasons I did, I can likely trust his
opinions of movies I haven't seen yet.  Virtually every reliable
(professional journalist) critique of the iPhone agrees it's an excellent
device with a few serious flaws.  Has Oxford ever acknowledged a flaw?  No,
he dismisses them either as advantages ("Flash eats batteries,")
unnecessary (voice dialing isn't needed since you shouldn't operate a
cellphone in a car) or inconsequential in some Apple's/Jobs' Masterplanned
Future Reality (3G is obsolete/unnecessary because mass adoption of the
iPhone will drive the development of ubiquitous free nationwide WiFi.  Yes,
Oxford actually said that after the iPhone 1.0 release.  I couldn't make
this stuff up!)

Only By coincidence- they _mostly_ simply repost iPhone-favorable blog
entries or news articles, often without any attribution, and often without
regard to the reliabilty of the original source.  (CNet, for example, might
generally be considered more reliable than some generic consumer blogger.
Without attributions, we can't gauge reliability.)   Oxford, in particular,
generally editorializes after the quoted blog/news item, usually without
any clear indication (other than the natural change in tone from
journalistic to lunatic) of what was a quote, and what were his additional
coments.  (Of course, why should we expect the use of quotation marks from
a guy who hasn't mastered capitalization yet.)  This of course, gives him
the perfect alibi when he posts absolute stupidity ("don't blame me, blame
the author") that anyone with his claimed knowledge or credentials should
have seen was incorrect from the get go.

Really?  Tell us some of Larry's "falsehoods" (as opposed to his crazy
opinions.)  

Let's review, OTOH, some of Oxford's recent "facts" off the top of my head:

He answered "yes" to a question about Skype (via Fring) and cut-and-paste
being available on the iPhone (without qualifying that only jailbroken
phones can run those apps- an important caviat, wouldn't you agree?) then
explained (in a different post) how the new app store makes jailbreaking
iPhone 3Gs unnecessary (huh?).  He was also corrected by TWO different
developers today about his "facts" pertaining to the SDK ans app development.
And, of course, there's nothing wrong with being wrong- one normally
apologizes for the error, or thanks the replier for the correction, and
everyone moves on.  But not Oxford- he ignores any corrections and/or
belittles the poster with a quip like "I only post facts" or "you don't
understand how Apple products/modern technology works..."  That damages
credibility.

Oxford's, and to a lesser extent, 4phun's "opinions" are frankly no crazier
than Larry's- VoIP on iPhones will be the end of cellular, Apple will have
60% cellular marketshare in 5 years, Nokia and/or Verizon will be out of
business in a couple of years, or that GPS built into the iPhone will put
Garmin, etc. out of business.  Compared to that, Larry's crap about Mossad
evesdropping on our phone calls, and the Moon landings being faked, seem
almost plausible...

The REAL difference, however, is we know, from prior posts and context,
EXACTLY who Larry is- a good ol' boy 60+ year-old curmudgeon, and a ham
radio operator who plays with computers and electronics as a hobby and also
to help with his organ repair biz.

Who, though, is Oxford?  We know that he claims to be an Apple
"expert/insider" with hundreds of "clients," many of whom he's "advised" to
buy iPhones.  He lives in a "technologically advanced" city of 210,000, yet
posts from Qwest's Minneapolis region- (frankly, if you live in a Qwest area,
how "technologically advanced" can it be?  Qwest only operates in 14
midwestern/mountain states.  I'm on Qwest in Denver- it's not exactly
Silicon Valley here!)  His last/only "wireless phone" before the iPhone was
a Macbook running VoIP!  He has "met with/talked to Steve Jobs" but he
never gives any specific credentials, (or denies the fake credentials we've
invented for him: stockboy/salesperson in a Twin Cities Apple Store, which
could actually fit ALL of his claims if you think about it!)  ;-)

Larry doesn't pretend to have any more expertise than that of a ham and a
consumer, while Ox tells us he's "smarter than 90% of people," an "expert"
in the computer industry and laments that the rest of us can't "understand
how things work" like he does.

Take Larry's posts for what they're worth, but Oxford has clearly
demonstrated that he has zero credibility on matters pertaining to wireless-
he's failed to grasp basic concepts of cellular, and is VERY ignorant of
non-Apple devices.  He knows the features of the iPhone very well- I'll
give him that, but without the context of knowing what the competition
offers, he doesn't know in what areas the iPhone lags, and instead just
spouts rhetoric like "it's the most technologically advanced phone ever
built" or "other phones will all work like this in 17 years..."

He's a trolling clown, and his buffoonery makes all of his posts suspect,
which is unfortunate because he could've been a useful resource about the
iPhone here if he'd proven himself to be reliable.  Sadly, finding facts in
his rants is a needle/haystack situation, made all the more regretful since
some of his needles are actually worth finding.

Read Todd's post in response to this. He says it much better than I can, and
he's been a member of this group longer, so he has a better handle on each
player.

However, I do want to emphasize, in line with one aspect of Todd's post,
that upon reading YOUR post, I immediately thought you had a problem
distinguishing between opinions and facts. Neither Oxford nor 4phun
typically post citations for their expressed "facts".  That you believe them
on the face value of them saying so just means that you're a biased observer
yourself.

Regardless of your opinion of Larry (and mine by the way), his list of
"questions" about iPhone functionality had a lot of merit, imo. Those
questions should not just be blown off as the rantings of a crazy person.
They have validity and beg for answers.