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You guys are probably starting to get tired of all of these iPhone articles, but this is an important one. Don’t worry FiringSquad’s team remains busy working on other hardware and gaming articles. Apple has marketed the iPhone as a paradigm shift in personal communication. They want the iPhone to stand alone as a platform, as a symbol. This is what they have already done with personal music and the iPod, the iPod is bigger than the Walkman ever was. Can the iPhone be bigger than the phone? Not so fast Apple.

Alexis and I found a bunch of things that make the iPhone feel like a beta product, one that didn’t get adequate testing and quality assurance evaluation, at least by us.

#1: Security

In Microsoft the World we argued that security would be Apple’s principal weakness in the next decade.

The first iPhone security patch came out less than a month after the iPhone was released. Many people considered Macs to be more secure than Windows machines, although that isn’t true. Hackers, especially those backed by organized crime, have had a much bigger target with Microsoft and have spent most of their efforts trying to disrupt their operations. With the increasing market share of Mac OS and the fact that the iPhone is really a mini Mac (not a Mac mini), the iPhone now becomes vulnerable. The first hack found a loophole in the Safari browser where a malicious entity could potentially take control of your iPhone, read your mail, see your contacts, and make calls from your iPhone.

One advantage that Apple does have is their ability to update the iPhone through iTunes. So updates should be more automatic and users should be a little safer as compared to other cell phones where updates were more difficult. This is like the vaccination theory, you not only help yourself but everyone around you when you get vaccinated.

Compared to other smartphones, the iPhone is at greatest risk because of its full fledged internet capability. It also has become a prime target for hackers trying to build their street (net) cred.