The greatest of examples: iPhone

It's offical as of today: I think the iPhone is great.

As an example.

For example, do you think a product must be good if it has a huge fan base? Well think again - the iPhone is a great example of a mobile that's all hype, no action. Well, some action obviously, but SOTA cutting edge technology? I doesn't even do UMTS yet, and without UMTS, no HSPA. I haven't had a chance to try one yet, but the mobile browsing experience can't be SOTA, and that's that.

So, how about people being willing to invest time and energy to prove something can be hacked? Well, the iPhone had it's jailbreaks... time and again... and they happened bloody quickly for the most part. Which technically proves that the product is mediocre at best from a technical security point of view.

Why am I noting this`? Because there's no escaping the iPhone hype and I had to deal with that one professionally. And it proved a great example of how all the hype, all the fan club and all the tech geeks hacking just don't prove it's actually a good product from a technical pov.

Thus, as far as I'm concerned, hype, fan club and hackers don't prove that for any other product, either. They haven't for, say... Safari... okay, this is turning into Apple bashing, so... err... Windows. Okay, I'm not sure that actually has fan clubs these days (eat your heart out, Billie boy!). Ah well, you get the idea.

So, product in question: Roomba. That robo-vac has a nice littly fan club, but tech geeky gadgets always do, so that proves diddly squat. My SO says there's books on hacking it on Amazon, which technically just proves it can be hacked. So I tell my SO, there there, look at the iPhone... fan clubs and hacks don't actually prove anything.

And for only the second time, I'm really happy the iPhone exists (the first time was finding that the term iPhone is almost a guarantee for hits within the context of a headline... but that's another story).

P.S. I may have labelled this "iPhone, Emperor Microsoft, Vacuum Cleaners", but I only now notice the implications. All I'll say regarding that is Adam Copeland, because that should completely confuse the hell out of pretty much anyone.