iPhone Launches, Nobody Impressed, Gizmodo Take Their Ball Home

Oh dear.  So on Friday Gizmodo's Brian Lam ran a very short post claiming that the iPhone would launch on Monday – cue a barrage of "you tease" and other slightly-less-polite comments, with an underlying hiccup of "please let it launch".  Well, time waits for no man (or woman, or long-awaited Apple cellphone) and so today everyone was stunned by, yes, the iPhone.  Only it's not exactly what was expected.

Turns out that whoever coined the name iPhone as rightful title of Apple's cellphone didn't bother to check with Cisco first, who had unassumingly trademarked the name back in 1996 and have decided that now is the ideal time to use it for a new range of VOIP handsets.  Gizmodo obviously got wind of this and thought it a marvellous jape to tease the hungry Mac-lovers.

Thing is, Mac-lovers don't take too kindly to having their emotions played with, and so Brian finds himself (and, by extension, Gizmodo) on the receiving end of quite a bit of criticism.  So far the phrase "damages your credibility" has been mentioned at least as many times as Apple has submitted cellphone-related patents, he's been called an Ass and prompted several people to change their homepages to something else (you mean not everybody has Google as their homepage?)

Does this damage Gizmodo?  Or is it, in fact, just another piece of internet ephemera that will be forgotten by next week (apart from by those people who wonder why their homepage is different every time they go online).  My money is on the latter, and Brian has attempted to sidetrack the flurry of criticism with a surprisingly rousing speech calling for alternative Apple Cellphone names.  While I'd love it to be the iTalkyTalky, my money is on MobileMe.

The iPhone is Dead [Gizmodo]