The Bluffers' Guide to the Jobs-fest

USUALLY HE'S pretty reticent but today is the day if you can't get enough Steve Jobs. Or yesterday was the great day if you're American, such are the vagaries of time zones - anyhow, you know what we mean.

The great man granted face time, or at least phone time, with the New York Times, USA Today, the Wall Street Journal and, at a leaked company meeting, his own employees. AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson accompanied Jobs for the Q&A sessions, doubtless feeling like Yoko used to at Beatles press conferences.

But you're a busy guy. The boss is giving you heat, the kids want a Wii and the wife wants a coat from some French shop. So here's our bluffers' guide to today's orgy of Apple coverage.

In the New York Times , Jobs disclosed that the multi-touch technology came from plans for the "Safari Pad", a mobile web appliance. "It's the first thing to come a long since the mouse and the bit-mapped display and take things to the next level," he said.

Jobs also suggested that there could be a corporate role for the Iphone. "There's already corporations who have been running pilots hooking up to Exchange servers and other kinds of mail servers, and they have gone very well," he said.

These are interesting remarks in the wake of the mini brouhaha over Gartner's warnings that the Iphone is a security vulnerability waiting to happen.

In USA Today , Jobs is mum on international availability even thpough Apple previously said the Iphone would be here in the UK by year end. "We have no announcement to make now," he said, playing a straight bat like Geoffrey Boycott.

The Iphone has been three years in the making he said. "We're product folks — we wanted to create a phone we loved. When we started this, none of us loved our phones. Yet, if you talk to iPod owners, or Mac owners, they love their iPods and Macs. We wanted to make a phone so great, you couldn't imagine going anywhere without it."

This might be a US/UK difference. Over here, people love and lust over their mobiles but the US still seems to have a lot of fat, clunky devices.

Jobs told staff that they are each entitled to a freebie Iphone, according to Infinte Loop, which said that widescreen Ipods are likely.

You can see what Jobs told the Journal, here.

If you missed it, Big Media also got first dibs on Iphone reviews. The key findings:

David Pogue in the New York Times said the EDGE network made him "almost ache" for a dialup link.

His more positive wrap: "As it turns out, much of the hype and some of the criticisms are justified. The Iphone is revolutionary; it's flawed. It's substance; it's style. It does things no phone has ever done before; it lacks features found even on the most basic phones."

The Journal said: "Our verdict is that, despite some flaws and feature omissions, the iPhone is, on balance, a beautiful and breakthrough handheld computer. Its software, especially, sets a new bar for the smartphone industry, and its clever finger-touch interface, which dispenses with a stylus and most buttons, works well, though it sometimes adds steps to common functions."

Finally, Newsweek : "Certainly all those people lining up to buy iPhones will find their investment worthwhile, if only for the delight they get from dazzling their friends. They will surely appreciate the iPhone's features and the way they are intertwined to present a unified experience. But in the future—when the iPhone has more applications and offers more performance, with a lower price—buyers will find even more value. So smart consumers may well wait for that day. But meanwhile they can only look with envy as the person sitting next to them to them on the subway, or standing ahead of them in the Whole Foods line, is enjoying the phone that finally fulfils the promise of people-friendly palm-top communication and computing."

OK, that's enough Iphone. µ