Dan Costa Has Sand In His Vajayjay
In a nicely ill-timed move (given the flurry of iPhone OS and App Store release news) PC Magazine ran a wonderful little piece of tripe by Dan Costa titled “Don’t Buy an iPhone 3G“. Before I commence to get my rant on, I have to ask: Why the hell do people write “Don’t Buy X” articles? Does anyone really benefit from this shit? I mean, I’m fucking negative, but even I don’t have the heart to rain on other people’s purchase decision parades. Anyway, on to the point-by-point rantification.
“The iPhone 3G is AT&T only.”
And? I hate to break it to you, but since apparently the entire tech journalism sector has lost it’s gods damned mind, here goes. Many phones are released exclusively via a single carrier. Hell, I remember when you couldn’t get a single Sony Erricson phone on a CDMA network. That’s the main reason I jumped ship to T-Mobile. Does this suck? Sure, but it’s the way things are. If choice of carrier trumps choice of device for you, then sure, don’t buy an iPhone 3G. Same deal with coverage issues. But it’s a weak-ass point to lead off with.
The iPhone 3G costs more than $199.
Christ, the Total Cost of Ownership thing again. Seriously people, give this shit a rest. I have never heard TCO used as an argument regarding a cell phone before. By this logic, my $299 RAZR actually cost over two grand. Wait, no it didn’t, the phone was $299 and the service is $55 a month. The hardware plus subscription service business model ain’t exactly new people.
The iPhone 3G isn’t worth the upgrade.
Guess what chuckle-nuts, not everyone buying an iPhone 3G is upgrading. I explained this before here, and I’m not inclined to repeat myself. But beyond that, check out this example of Dan’s blinding logic.
There’s no shortage of iPhones already out there. Walk down a New York City street and you’ll see them everywhere. I’d go as far as to say that anyone who really wanted an iPhone already has one.
Really, care to cite what market research led you to that conclusion. Oh, I guess that the firm of Pulled Out My Ass doesn’t like publicity.
The iPhone 3G’s battery life is going to suck.
To quote Dan:
Unfortunately, I don’t know this for sure since Apple didn’t give us the head start it gave to David Pogue of The New York Times and author of iPhone: The Missing Manual. Still, this has been a chronic problem for 3G phones of all varieties.
Notice the reference to Pogue, we’ll come back to that. But more importantly, in two sentences Dan manages to point out that a) he has no idea what he’s talking about and b) the iPhone’s battery performance is probably going to be comparable to every other 3G phone out there.
The iPhone 3G’s storage is limited to 16GB.
Quoth the moron:
Right now 8GB and 16GB are your only choices, but I bet we’ll see a 32GB version by the end of the year. At 32GB you’ll have a device that could truly serve as a full-time iPod replacement, with room to store thousands of MP3s and high-quality video files. Now that might be worth buying-depending on the price.
So. PC’s will get faster and hard drives will get bigger and TV’s will get cheaper and a whole host of tech products will improve over time. Seriously Dan, are you channeling my mother?
The iPhone 3G is not a feature leader.
Um, in what fucking universe. Quoting again:
What’s missing: support for additional flash memory; stereo Bluetooth support; picture messaging; video recording; and the rudimentary ability to cut-and-paste text. Its 2-megapixel camera doesn’t even have a flash! In short, there are free phones with better features than the iPhone 3G.
No, Dan, there are free phones that have one or two of those features. And, last time I checked, none of them have Mobile Safari and the App Store. But, hey, you didn’t whine about a physical keyboard, so points there.
So, there you go. Another whiny piece of link-bait (feel free to send me a check for my cut of the referrals). Now, above I told you we’d come back to the Pogue thing. Here’s a quote from the beginning of Dan’t article:
In every other story you read, the iPhone is being spun as the apex of technological sophistication. The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and USA Today reviews, written by authors handpicked by Steve Jobs to receive early review units, have been predictably glowing and effusive.
Hmm, could someone be jealous that they didn’t get a review unit?
Posted on July 10th, 2008 under Posts • Tags: Apple, iPhone, jackassery. • 
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July 10th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
You hit the nail right on the head. It’s pieces like this that the WinDroids use to pronounce their Windows Mobile phones are better because they have some “missing” feature from the iPhone.
The reason these articles are useless to anybody trying to make an unbiased buying decision is that while they use all their column inches to describe all the features other phones have that the iPhone doesn’t, they never do the reverse.
So pity the poor saps that heed their advice thinking they have something “better” than the iPhone with no wifi and a shitty half-assed web browser. Oh well.
July 10th, 2008 at 1:44 pm
@wafflejuice:
Thanks. The other thing that Dan’s doing, that loads of tech “journalists” do is to make the assumption that his needs are the same as everyone else’s. I swear most of these chumps have Narcissistic Personality Disorder.
July 10th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
@The Angry Drunk: Oh yeah, there was a BIG round of NPD back when the MacBook Air came out.
July 10th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Fantastic. Absolutely hilarious dissection of an awful article. I think many “journalists” suffer from a lack of ability. Common sense appears to be lost on these folks. Here’s to the coming excuse of “It’s a commentary by a well-respected columnist.” Most magazines like to break that one out whenever the facts or lack of fact-checking get in the way.
My favorite part of the article is that he doesn’t once mention a better product. As you said, what’s the value in the “Don’t buy X” product articles? If you can’t even name one product that I should buy instead, how we can really trust the magazine’s expert opinion.
Anyway, thanks for writing this, it made my day!
July 10th, 2008 at 3:11 pm
“anyone who really wanted an iPhone already has one.”
Well. I guess that’s that then. Apple, your job is done. Time to free up the iPhone engineers to work on the next MacBook Pro.
July 10th, 2008 at 3:19 pm
At least he didn’t call them (the privileged journalists, I mean) ’sycophants’ like Thurrott did last year! Kudos to Costa.
July 10th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Why do people write “don’t buy” articles? Because they’re paid to.
A better question might be: Why do fat guys with ugly beards who think that imaginary hyphenated words are the pinnacle of internet comedy waste hours of time pointing out the fact that PC Magazine has an anti-Apple bias like they’ve just discovered fire and then start insisting that everyone else in the world is narcissistic? Bonus points if you can get the answer out without using the term “cunt-nugget” or sweating through an article of clothing.
July 10th, 2008 at 3:33 pm
@Kevin Smith wannabe:
You are an idiot. Clear enough for you?
July 10th, 2008 at 3:37 pm
> What’s missing: support for additional flash memory; stereo Bluetooth support; picture messaging; video recording; and the rudimentary ability to cut-and-paste text. Its 2-megapixel camera doesn’t even have a flash!
In short: No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.
July 10th, 2008 at 4:26 pm
Somebody with a stronger stomach than I have should go through the archives and see if Dan did a TCO analysis of buying a PC vs. a Mac.
TCO is what pundits dredge up when they’re running out of bullet points.
July 10th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
what i always “loved” about PC magazine articles is their thinking that macs are like all the window PCs they write about. they truly have no idea why apple products are so great and popular. to them, it’s a miracle people don’t see the “logic” that articles like this try to explain.
everytime i read an article like this i keep remembering the time microsoft built the office suite for mac….BEFORE getting a mac department. maybe that’s what pc magazine needs…a mac department. (i wonder if there is an apple product in the place)
lol
July 10th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
>What’s missing?
Cheese in the crust, man! Pizza Hut pwn’s Apple.
July 10th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
@Dustin: That’s the beauty of these sort of hit pieces. They don’t have to mention a better product. All they have to do is cobble together a list of “missing features” and pretend all other phones offer them, all on the same device, for free and without any sort of service contract. At least that’s as close as I can get to their logic (note the TCO arguement vanishes when Dan talks of “free” phones with more features than the iPhone, as I’m certain those “free” phones are tied to service contracts as well).
July 10th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Who has sand in his vag again? Lord, it’s a phone, try not to have a coronary because your ego somehow got offended by a column about a THING, a pile of silicon and plastic.
Oh, go ahead and call me an “idiot” like you did that other commenter, or a “jackass” like Gruber constantly does. Such an effective way to argue, doesn’t make you look irrational at all.
Almost makes me not want to buy one of these things. This is what I hate about being a Mac user — being associated with emotional, poorly-argued trash like this.
July 10th, 2008 at 5:53 pm
PS How is it with great writers like Pogue and the folks at basically every magazine and newspaper (and website!) in the country using Macs, we end up with people like you representing the users? I guess it’s always that way, like poor uneducated whites being the self-appointed US patriots.
July 10th, 2008 at 5:55 pm
Yo. Drunk guy. I think I love you.
Great piece. You’re going on my blog roll thingy.
I’m getting sick, like you, of asinine commenters who don’t feel the need to pad their commentary with facts or cloud their thinking with rationality.
When I was a child we called them “fucking retards,” but that isn’t politically correct anymore.
Drop on over to my crappy little website sometime. It looks an awful lot like yours, what with the same theme and all. Feel free to pee in the shrubs and fart. I run fairly informal gathering as a general rule.
Nice blog you have here.
July 10th, 2008 at 6:19 pm
@Cursing Makes You Right:
Oh, I won’t call you an idiot; I have other epithets in mind.
First: Look you jackanape, what makes you think my ego is offended. What I am offended by is pompous “journalists” who couldn’t string two logical propositions together to save their lives.
Second: I have neither the time nor energy to “argue” with people who exist solely to drive up the hit-counts for their corporate masters. You want to have a rational discussion about the merits of the iPhone 3G and I’m all in. But that was wasn’t Dan wrote, he wrote a checklist of half-baked arguments without any actual substance.
Third: What are you threatening me with not buying an iPhone? I don’t give a crap what you buy or don’t buy; but if you make a decision based on my blog then you get the title of Mother of All Retards.
Fourth: Who the fuck ever claimed that I represented anyone? Do I actually have to put some sort of “the opinions expressed on the blog are those of the writer blah blah blah” disclaimer up so that the feeble minded don’t get confused and somehow conflate me with Apple PR.
By the way, it’s not the cursing that makes me right. It’s the being right that makes me right.
July 10th, 2008 at 7:51 pm
@The Angry Drunk: Just gotta say, love this: “By the way, it’s not the cursing that makes me right. It’s the being right that makes me right.”
July 10th, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Wow. Your article was spot-on, and your comment defense was spotter-onner. People like you are why I like the Mac community: bright and entertaining. I love being associated with people like you.
July 10th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
You’re right? No, if you look past the juvenile cursing you’re a Nixonian smear artist, asserting the following with zero proof :
-Dan (who I don’t know and I could care less about his mag, for the record) is jealous of access. Really? Proof? He makes a good point about how Apple manipulated the press and all you have is this BS?
-Dan doesn’t believe what he wrote, he’s just doing it for hits/links. Again, where’s the proof? What have you proven? How are you “right?” Not even going to argue with this mud you are slinging. The impetus is on YOU to back this stuff up. You’re just smearing. For God’s sake, you didn’t even bother to float a conspiracy theory on how he personally benefits from more traffic to PC mag.
People like you and Gruber love to libel writers like this. Argue? Fine. Most of your points are matters of opinion, and in at least one case you nail the guy (free phones thing). But then you have to use all kinds of nasty name calling and then smear the guy personally, WHEN YOU HAVE NO EVIDENCE. It’s sick and wrong. And your baying lynch mob of commenters makes it worse.
And you’re right, why should I let this interfere with enjoying my tech. Good point. I won’t do that.
July 10th, 2008 at 9:12 pm
@Cursing Makes You Right:
Ok, I take it back, you are an idiot. “Nixonian smear artist”, “libel”. Are you for real? Dan Costa wrote a shitty puff piece of “opinion” for PC Mag and I called him out on it. On my blog. Which gets maybe 50 page views on a good day. If not for the fact that Gruber (who you apprently have a hard-on for) decided to give me a bump you would probably never even have heard of me.
Tell me this sweet-cheeks, do you zip around the Internet defending poor paid contributers to major industry magazines from us evil 50 page view a day bloggers; or is your little crusade confined to people who get linked from Daring Fireball?
In short, get bent.
July 10th, 2008 at 9:40 pm
@ Cursing Makes You Right
TAD isn’t just beating up Dan Costa, here. He’s calling out a system of stupid, fact-free opinion pieces that run FUD as news. Dan Costa really isn’t worth all this as an individual contributor. He just happens to be the name on the most recent crap-ridden drivel.
I also would like to apologize personally for the way our education system has failed you.
Peace.
July 10th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
@Rip Ragged:
Truth be told, I went back and looked at some of Dan’s other articles, and I agree with a number of them. He just rolled snake-eyes on this one.
July 10th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
@Rip Ragged:
Oh, and thanks for getting what I’m up to here.
July 10th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
By the way, does being a member of a “baying lynch mob of commenters” entitle me to any freebies?
I’ll pay the shipping.
July 11th, 2008 at 12:18 am
[...] I have a “braying lynch mob of commenters“. Sweet! Now I just need some henchmen and things are gonna start looking up around [...]
July 11th, 2008 at 12:39 am
Every time someone drags out the old no-Flash-as-deal-breaker canard they conveniently forget to list which other available phones do have built-in Flash support in their browsers. Why do you think that is? I mean there must be lots of them because who could imagine buying a phone that didn’t have that essential feature?
July 11th, 2008 at 2:29 am
For some reason Apple’s products - and especially the iPhone, I’ve noted - always gets tagged in the media as “some sort of fancy design phone for apple/design fanatics”. What 99% of the press just doesn’t get is that it’s not about what it looks like or a feature count - it’s how it works that makes it so good.
They try to teach you in school that it’s quality that counts, not quantity. But people seem to forget after five minutes.
July 11th, 2008 at 2:50 am
I may have come to this post a little late, but I think there are a few people that may have missed the point.
@ Cursing Makes You Right:
It is very easy to see this post as a personal attack against Dan if the only thing you read is the title! When you actually jump in and read the little words then you’ll soon see the point.
It is unfortunate that we do have articles like these that are all over the web. It’s not just the “PC guys” doing it! I have seen a great deal of hot-air articles from Mac guys and even the odd linux one too. They cover the tech pages and it really doesn’t benefit anyone who is actually shopping for good advice!
Now before you all jump on the “they’re told to write this” band wagon, just consider the refreshing experience if one of these guys actually wrote a fair assessment! I was going to say balanced but sometimes a product IS just pants! (Vista is a case in point! Not a good word to be said about it!)
Now I own a 1st gen iPhone and I recognise its shortfalls like probably every other user. I have been offered a cheap upgrade deal to the new model so I signed on the dotted line. It can’t be worse can it!?
I really can’t say much more, so I will simply sign off, as the red mists descends I am just please I am now a proud member of the TAD lynch mob!
July 11th, 2008 at 8:16 am
“The iPhone 3G is AT&T only.”
In the U.S., yes. The iPhone 3G is launching in 22 other countries and AT&T has nothing to do with it. They read the WWW there, too, Dan.
July 11th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Every time I read “Vayjayjay” I laugh out loud. I probably need therapy.
July 15th, 2008 at 8:02 am
Internal Pingback
July 19th, 2008 at 3:57 am
Why *do* people write “Don’t Buy X” articles?
Easy: it’s a genre, an artistic format for shills, like “live by satellite” or “sings the oldies”. Everybody’s got to go through that once, some over and over again.
July 29th, 2008 at 2:16 pm
“But, hey, you didn’t whine about a physical keyboard, so points there.”
I’ll take your criticism because you are funny and remind me of Kevin Smith before he lost all the weight. But please, I insist, keep your points: the virtual keyboard on the iPhone totally sucks.
When I tap a key I would like seeing the correct letter on the screen to be more than a pleasant surprise. Any QUERTY BlackBerry beats the iPhone when it comes to text entry. As a Web browsing device, the iPhone is amazing. As portable email machine it totally blows. Not for nothing, but just about the only good thing I can say about the iPhone’s virtual keyboard is that it is that you can’t get sand in it.
Unless, of course, you have freakishly small hands. And in that case, God has played yet another cruel joke on you.
Stay classy,
Dan
July 29th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
@Dan Costa:
Jesus Dan, are you actually replying to this 19 days after I posted it? 18 days after the iPhone launch? Far past the point where record iPhone sales have sufficiently proven that your little link-bait hit piece obviously didn’t mean jack shit to the rest of the world.. You truly are a wonder to behold.
Wish I could help you with your eye-hand coordination problems buddy. I’ve had an iPhone for all of a week and I’m not having any issues typing with my sausage-like digits. Maybe you’re just spastic.
Nice attempt at an insult with the fat Kevin Smith line. I guess everyone with a beard looks alike to you. I’ll be sure not to mention your male pattern baldness and chin pubes in any future piece I do on you.
Stay classy yourself, you magnificent shit monkey.
July 29th, 2008 at 9:28 pm
You said it, Kevin.
“Hey, this is Angry Drunk’s iPhone. He has AT&T, so he’s got, like, zero bars in his own gods damned bedroom. Hope you didn’t have anything important to say.
Seriously AT&T, this is fucked up.
Commence the derision by the “don’t buy an iPhone” crowd.”
http://tinyurl.com/5d2oxe
Stay classy,
Dan
July 29th, 2008 at 9:35 pm
@Dan Costa:
Dan, you are truly hilarious. No, wait, you’re just pathetic.