At the iPhone announcement last January, Steve Jobs called his new product the “best iPod ever.” Now the iPhone is finally here, after six months of speculation. So does it live up to the hype as the ultimate iPod music phone? Rolling Stone technology writer Tom Samiljan took it for a test drive, focusing specifically on the music, media, photo-viewing and other features you find on a typical iPod.

WHAT’S GOOD:
The interface and software are stupendous. Apple’s take on the touch screen is one of the first to really make you want to give up hardware-based keys altogether. As far as scrolling through menus, songs, albums, and settings is concerned, the iPhone’s touchscreen is fast and responsive to your fingertip strokes. In particular, scrolling through your music and video collection is much faster and more accurate than on a traditional iPod with a click wheel. (more…)

Forget those cheery local news reports about people waiting for an iPhone outside the Apple Store: Our video squad has cracked this thing wide open – the bad singing, the puking, the drinking, the ex-cons. Watch and see.

Gadget geeks, trend-hungry kids, hustlers, and other amusing New Yorkers have formed lines outside of the city’s Apple stores, hoping to be one of the very first to purchase the iPhone when it goes on sale Friday. We took our camera to the two Apple Stores in Manhattan to observe the scene, and find out what music they’re going to put on their iPhones – if they feel like listening to music at all after spending three days outside on Fifth Avenue.

Later this month Apple will release it’s latest nifty gadget, the iPhone. We asked everyone from No Doubt’s Adrian Young to Gabe Saporta of Cobra Starship if they’re planning to buy one.

• Adrian Young: “I really want one, but I just got the newest BlackBerry. After five hundred bucks, it feels kind of stupid to drop another five hundred bucks on a phone when I already have everything I already need. My guess is that there may be a couple of glitches in that first generation, so maybe I’ll get the second generation, once they get it right.”
• Gabe Saporta: “Fuck that, that looks so stupid, dude. The reason you see everyone using the Sidekick is because it has a big-ass keyboard. How are you gonna type on an iPhone? It’s not gonna work, bro, the touch screen is gonna suck. It’s gonna be a lot of fun, but it’s gonna be a big toy. If you wanna do email, it’s not gonna be good for it — you need to have buttons, you can’t just use a touch screen because your fingers will miss the keys. But I mean, I’ll try it out — I’m not gonna judge it until I try it out.”
• Cobra Starship guitarist Ryland Blackinton: “BlackBerry for life, you know what I’m saying? I use a Mach3 razor. I use Old Spice deodorant. And I use a BlackBerry and I’m never changing. I just got one in January, and I’ve never had e-mail in my hands. All my young kids will make fun of me when I’m older, but I don’t care. I’ll be the most efficient, best-smelling, cleanest shorn brother.”
• Fall Out Boy vocalist/guitarist Patrick Stump: “I’m waiting for them to make an Apple Rotary Phone. I’m holding out, so I’m not getting an Apple phone until I see that.”

So you’re leaving The Shins’ show and you can’t get “New Slang” out of your head? Well, if you’ve got the newly unveiled iPhone, before you’re out the door you can go online, download it, play it, then call all your friends to remind them what a douche you are, all on one handy device only slightly bigger than a deck of cards. Oh, and there’s also a camera and web and email access thrown in, along with an all-encompassing touch-screen that dispenses with annoying keypads, to make all of geekdom cream in their hipster jeans.

(In other news, widespread peace has broken out in Baghdad, cancer was cured this morning by a Des Moines schoolteacher, and Abraham Lincoln rose from the dead to report that he in fact did not enjoy the play that much. But more details on those stories later.)

With his customary penchant for humility, Steve Jobs called it a “revolutionary product that changes everything”…including, he hopes, Apple’s bottom-feeding stock fortunes. Of course, we’ve heard this kind of unjustified corporate masturbation before, most recently with the video iPod (screen’s too damn small), Sony PSP (ditto, and the games are weak), Playstation3 (too expensive and the games suck), and Nintendo Wii (controllers inconveniently break our TV). Is it really worth a $499 price tag just to get a cool new phone? Guess it will depend on how much crap you like to lug around in your pockets…