I’ve already seen a number of sites listing some of the gadgets at the expo. In my usual contrary style, let me point out a few that some people are all excited about but that I see as dead ends:

• Flash Drives.
  Really? This is cool? At $100 or more? I don’t get it.
• Scosche myTrek
  Isn’t this just a $130 $3 pedometer? I know, it’s not really, but still.
• TV Remote app/gadgets
  This sounds so cool, but think about it. The iPhone makes a terrible remote because it has no tactile feedback. For a small number of functions, it might be possible to have a simple gesture based UI, but I think in real life this is nowhere near as cool as it seems at first glance.

I did buy the Blue Yeti Pro USB and analog XLR microphone ($199 show price), despite some mixed reviews on Amazon. Hopefully it will meet my expectations for a home studio mic that I can also take with me and use with my Macbook Pro.

And I love the Discovery Bay Atari Arcade for iPad ($59.95) with the “Atari’s Greatest Hits” app. But be advised, the games are $0.99 each or $9.99 for all 99 available old-school Atari arcade games.

Another interesting piece of hardware is the D1 DAC (digital to audio converter) from Audioengine. I have a Mac Mini that is dedicated to my living room TV entertainment setup but at $169 I need to do a bit more research to see if the improvement in sound quality is really that dramatic. It is a really solid and attractive bit of hardware though.

There was a lot of other stuff at Macworld | iWorld like navigation, home automation, a nice portable projector from Epson ($800) and a whole bunch of music production apps and hardware – oh, and a bazillion cases, screen protectors, and other such, of course

I’m going, of course. I’ll report here if anything grabs me.

Now that it’s official, I guess we will finally get to find out what the ultimate impact will be.

While AT&T is the carrier we all love to hate, the assumption that everything will be better on Verizon may be overblown.  If we can believe anything, Verizon users should experience fewer dropped calls than AT&T users do, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area and the New York area.

One of the biggest negatives with Verizon to keep in mind is that you won’t be able to surf the net over 3G while talking on the phone at the same time – that’s only possible on AT&T’s network. I’m so used to this now, that this capability would be hard to live without.

It has also been reported that AT&T’s 3G network is faster, but there are those on the other side of that argument too. If there is a difference I suspect it’s marginal in real life and probably varies a lot case-by-case.

Of course  we all know the limitation of international use due to CDMA vs. GSM and SIM cards – but for many U.S. users, who don’t travel internationally, this is a non-issue – and others say they’ll just keep a cheap GSM phone and use pre-paid SIM cards for international use.

Another question is of course whether this will mean a large influx of new iPhone users, thus eating into the Droid market, or will Verizon iPhone customers be mostly switchers from AT&T that already had an iPhone.

Regardless, having the iPhone available on more carriers is a good thing, no matter how you look at it (maybe unless you’re AT&T). Competition and more choices will be nice for customers – maybe AT&T will finally resolve some of their network troubles – or maybe not.

The biggest problem is your battery.  Once you run Skype, it will keep running, and sucking up your battery.  Instead of 5-6 hours of usage on my 3G S, with Skype in the background, I was getting more like 2-3 hours.  As Stuart notes, the only way to stop it is manually from the iOS 4 multitasking (double-click) feature.

Skype should have a way to turn on/off multitasking from within the app itself. And as Stuart notes, when it is running in the background, you get barraged with notifications for everything and you have no controls over those notifications, short of quitting the Skype app from the multitasking bar.

The short of it is, if you start the Skype app, you probably want to double-click to kill it so it doesn’t kill your iPhone’s battery.

One could say this is a problem for the future, but I know people personally that are ready for the computerless, iPad-only world today – they can do everything they want to do on their iPad.  In fact, that’s exactly what they do. The laptop or desktop gathers dust, until they need to sync something or perform an update to the iPad.  In practice, these folks usually also have an iPhone or iPod for which they also must use the “real computer” to sync.

The only app they run on the computer is iTunes. Yet they still must suffer all the babysitting and housekeeping that goes with keeping a full Mac or PC functioning: patches, drivers, viruses, malware, system updates etc. – all just to run iTunes. Their $1,000 PC has become nothing more than a “syncing station.”

This is also a show-stopper for recommending the iPad as a replacement for a wearing-out PC – even for someone who is  a perfect candidate for it.  If they have to buy a new PC , and “maintain” it, with all the support and admin hassles that go with that, even if only in order to setup, sync, and update the iPad, then iPad is essentially a non starter as a “replacement” option.

Perhaps the most important thing to consider when buying an iPad is the USB cable. It must be connected to a PC to get iPad going and to sync/update. In the name of truth in advertising, Apple’s marketing should show the iPad connected by wire to a PC because that’s the reality a buyer is faced with.

Apple, this is not a problem for some distant future. That future is here already. Please tell me when I can suggest the iPad to these users so they can get off the Windows/Mac Admin treadmill.

I’m not sure if these wireless companies were in denial at the time, or whether they really believed Apple and their little toy iPhone was not much of a threat. I got the sense, they really believed it.  And I have to admit, I was guilty of a little underestimation of the iPhone’s potential at the time myself – that changed pretty fast for me (see this post, or this, or this).

I wonder if now, the tables have turned, and is it now Apple who is underestimating Verizon and Motorola’s new Droid that was announced today?

In my experience so far with Android-based phones, they are a lot more like the pre-iPhone “smartphones” than they are like iPhone – I call them DIY phones. They are more clunky to use, less intuitive, and much less consistent between apps.  Apple rules with an iron fist and that has it’s problems, but it also means the user experience is more consistent, even when using third-party apps.

However, in the U.S. iPhone has the AT&T Albatross around its neck. Verizon has created the perception that their network is better. Certainly, iPhone users know the AT&T data network is bad, bad, bad (and the voice calling ain’t a whole lot better).

Time will tell how this plays out of course, but my advice to Apple is don’t be like those companies you leapfrogged just a few short years ago. Don’t underestimate your opponent.

Yeah.  You know why? Because the iPhone provides a user experience that doesn’t make it almost impossible to use the Internet in any useful way, unlike AT&Ts other “smartphone” products. AT&T counted on iPhone users having a data usage profile similar to users of these other devices with their garbage user interfaces – no wonder nobody uses any data network on those things.

With the iPhone, even non-tech gurus can easily find and use web content, email, Twitter, and other data services. And so they use it, and use it. John Donovan, the chief technology officer of AT&T told the New York Times: “Overnight we’re seeing a radical shift in how people are using their phones. There’s just no parallel for the demand.”

iPhone users are already angry at AT&T for charging so much and giving so little. AT&T whines about spending billions on data network upgrades, but let’s face it: The iPhone has been a absolute blessing for AT&T:

The average iPhone owner pays AT&T $2,000 during his two-year contract — roughly twice the amount of the average mobile phone customer.

Without the iPhone, what would they be selling? Now AT&T wants to throttle back iPhone users even more. I think that would drive a mass exodus and put tremendous pressure on Apple to open up the device to other carriers.

A lot of things are not perfect with the iPhone, to say the least. One example is the “phone” part of it. If you’re a person that really likes to use their mobile phone for, say, talking to people, you know, not typing, but with your voice, and listening to the other person with your ear, you might want to play with an iPhone a little before jumping in.

Besides that minor detail, here are a few other areas where iPhone users suffer:

• Incompatible (or limited) Bluetooth support
• No MMS (to be fixed in the future for newer phones at least)
• No Flash support in the browser, meaning many sites cannot be used from the iPhone
• No multitasking – it doesn’t support more than one application running at the same time

And of course one of the biggest practical limitations of the iPhone is being locked to a carrier, AT&T in the U.S. For many people, this means switching carriers and for all of us in the U.S., it means accepting AT&T coverage and performance, which for many people sucks.

And then there’s the whole battle of the App Store that triggered Arrington’s response and a firestorm across the net (among geeks that follow such things at least, but even carried somewhat by the mainstream media):

It seems that in more numbers than ever, consumers are speaking out against AT&T’s network problems and developers are complaining about Apple’s and AT&T’s inconsistent policies on which applications get approval.

- The Washington Post

Yes, as an iPhone user, we accept a lot of flaws with the phone and service. But guess what? Even with these flaws, the combination of iPhone device and Apple and AT&T service still kicks ass over everything else. Many people seem to think Apple iPhone users are too stupid to realize what they’re giving up. I disagree. While there may be users in that category, for many of us, we know what we’re giving up, but we’re willing to do it, because the alternatives are even worse, far worse in most cases. [I'm going to qualify this in a few specific ways. One is if you talk on the phone a lot (I don't) the iPhone limitations hit a lot harder and you'd probably prefer a different phone. Second, if you really, really, really need a hardware keyboard, for emotional or whatever reason, then don't even consider the iPhone.]

As an example of a user that has issues with the iPhone but isn’t going anywhere, consider Dave Rosenberg of cnet who writes a mostly scathing review, and then concludes with:

All that said, I’m going to stick with it for now. The interface, utility, and functional possibilities are just that good.

That pretty much sums it up. However, all this said, Apple still needs to use this episode as a reality check. The iPhone has a global marketshare of only 1.9 percent. The competition is heating up, big time. Apple has a bullseye on their back, with the entire industry setting their sights on displacing them. For the most part, this is Apple’s game to lose. Apple needs some humility here (not something Steve Jobs has ever been known for). They could be knocked off their pedestal if they go too far. For some, like Arrington (and Om Malik before him), they have already crossed that line. For many of us, we’re not blindly following Apple wherever they go, but weighing the options, and, for now at least, staying with the iPhone, but keeping an eye open to the alternatives.

What’s next? Will Apple will start adding secret hidden “blacklists” to Safari too so competitors cannot even develop web-based versions of their apps?

No calls unless you can get Wifi.

In general, incoming calls are impractical, even if you’re on wifi, since the Skype app has to be the one and only active app in order to receive calls.  If you’re doing something else on the phone, like browsing or checking email (or twitter), you cannot receive calls.

In test calls, I found the app unreliable even when all the conditions are met.  Trying to call the iPhone Skype from a PC, the calling side just continued to ring, even after I answered the call on the iPhone.  The Skype for iPhone app then seemed “frozen” where I couldn’t end the call or do anything except hit the big button.

When calls did connect (requires the iPhone to be connected via Wi-fi), the call quality was fine.

Not being able to make Skype calls except when connected to wi-fi is a pretty big limitation for me. Ironically, when a friend had to call their wife on Skype in Costa Rica recently, I had to let them use PhoneGnome and OpenSky on my iPhone to do so, because that was the only combination that worked on iPhone without wifi.