The bosses of Apple and AT&T joined forces to answer some questions from USA Today's Jefferson Graham regarding a certain cellular telephone/iPod/traffic monitor/Ginsu knife that goes on sale tomorrow.
Highlights include Jobs saying that the iPhone has been in development for three years, and both execs' responses to criticism of Apple's choice of AT&T's Edge network for the iPhone's web access (reviews have mentioned load times of well over a minute for some web pages):
Stephenson: With a device like this, you need a broad based network that covers every nook and cranny of the country. That's Edge. It does a nice job. [The iPhone] also has Wi-Fi, which is better than anything you'll find in any handset. Between the two, you'll get a good experience. We're selling tens of thousands of Blackberry devices, which are all Edge phones, and they perform well. We've tested this nine ways to Sunday, and we think the experience will be great.
Jobs: The iPhone switches to any known Wi-Fi network when it senses one. What we've found is that Edge is terrific for e-mail and basic Internet usage. When people need more speed, there's Wi-Fi. The nice thing about Wi-Fi is it's way faster than 3G. People are in areas with Wi-Fi much more than they think. I walk into work with the iPhone, and it instantly switches to a Wi-Fi network. If I'm walking down the street in downtown Palo Alto, the iPhone will switch from Edge to Wi-Fi. It's very fluid.
Edge will be faster than people have read in the reviews. Some of the criticism of Edge is more theoretical. Blackberrys use Edge, and in many cases [are] slower, because our software is better.
