Apple has only made one mistake with the iPhone.

[Air]

I'm curious as to when the next iPhone will be announced, and if the new firmware will be available for the current version. I'm sure that we will be seeing 3G and GPS for the next bit of hardware features in the next version though.

[flavius]

The OP has a point, but the real mistake happened later, in fact only very recently when v1.1.1 was rolled out.

They should have embraced the enthusiasm and inventiveness of their customers as an asset earlier.

[Hawk]

Originally Posted by DocHolliday

If they don't get it by the 2nd generation though the iphone becomes insignificant as other phones will keep getting more and more robust and Apple will be 2 steps behind with every generation of the iphone, seemingly because they want to squeeze every penny they can out of the Apply loyalists, people who always have to have the new gadget, and the trendy hipsters. That's not a good message to send in my opinion.

Isn't that kind of how they started losing customers to MS back in the day when it was Mac vs Microsoft?

[greenjbhsd]

I think it was always more in that they are control freaks. The one advantage that Apple has always had was that they control both the hard and software. So errors/bugs/incompatibilities were not nearly as common. Couple that with a low market share hold and you have a stable and mostly virus free machine. During the 90s they decided to license the hardware, seemed like a good plan to them, of course that lasted all of a year as other companies turned out a machine = or better in quality (aesthetics aside) and Apple started to lose hardware revenue. The licenses were then pulled. All control shifted back to Apple. This is the kind of thing that drove some people, such as myself, away from Apple, though I would not say towards Microsoft. I do use Windows XP, but that is only b/c based on my uses I have only two choices Mac or Windows, since I left Mac, there was one house to go to.

Apple has made many good choices, but many poor ones as well. Overall I think they are a fair company, they treat their customers fairly ok. One thing I did like about them is they never shifted their customer support overseas, so it was nice to call them and have a good conversation and get to a solution fast.