Memo: no more phones for Joel

Sprint sent Joel Spolsky, entrepreneur, CEO, blogger, writer, uber-greek and smart person a phone to review. That was a mistake ...

Joel on Software

... The phone they sent me, an LG Fusic, is really quite awful, and the service, Power Vision, is tremendously misconceived and full of dumb features that don’t work right and cost way too much...

Joel is a good writer and he clearly loves his topic -- he rips Sprint and LG along several new dimensional planes. It's funny, but mixed in the swordplay is a serious point. Sprint is a complete mess. You don't screw up this badly without having a very dysfunctional organization. If I were on Sprint's board, I'd take this essay as justification to fire the CEO and bring in someone who can clean house.

Which brings me the second coming of the geeks, aka Apple's iPhone. Regular folks like the RAZR, but it doesn't move the geeks. Nothing does. All the phones are lousy. The network owners, like Sprint, are idiots. The iPhone shines like a beacon of hope, presumably carried on Apple's network (leased capacity). I'm sure it will be perfect... *

* Note to early adopters. Go ahead. Don't be worried about Apple's history of doing hardware alpha testing on their first set of customers ...

(Hat tip: Jim L)