I agree entirely. You have to take your hat off to their brand creation though....they have generated this huge, huge "must have" image that the 12-40 year olds just aspire to. The hype surrounding every product launch is legendary, even generating coverage on mainstream TV news channels and actually being presented as a "news" item - it is quite brilliant really.

But in recent years the products have been technically inferior, often woefully - recall the so over-hyped I-phone 4 release that proved so rubbish at calls unless a rubber band was placed round the aerial

As I said, I have easily compared my 3GS with my 4 year old Nokia non-smartphone on the same network in the same places. The I-phone is woeful in comparison for being able to detect and connect to a cell network.

One poster earlier mentioned the I-phone poor signal strength indication, stating Steve Jobs had (rather amusingly IMHO) tried to defend this by accusing other phone manufacturers of overstating their signal strength Well, how exactly would Jobs explain a colleague standing next to me with an older Nokia phone on the very same network able to make perfect calls, whilst my newer generation I-phone stubbornly indicates "no signal" - and still indicates the same many minutes later and fails to connect any calls?

As can be seen by the diversity of replies - some hate them, some love 'em. I sit somewhere in the middle I think....but definitely very, very poor on the phone side