The iPad? No.

The iPhone? Wait for a better one.

Some people have characterized Apple haters as "the tea party of the tech world," a vocal minority that just won't like anything the company ever does.

But other early takes on the company's new products are a good reminder of just how clunky the next big thing can be upon launch, and just how many generations of that product it can take to start to meet users' expectations.

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Time's Lev Grossman summed this up pretty well in his 2007 review of the first iPhone:

Apple and its partners are just beginning to figure out how to develop for this thing. Look at the iPods of five years ago. That monochrome interface! That clunky moving touchwheel! They look like something a caveman whittled out of a piece of flint using another piece of flint. Now imagine something that's going to make the iPhone look like that. You'll have one in a few years, and it'll be cheaper, too. If you're not ready to think different, then think ahead.

In other words, the early haters of a product, in hindsight, aren't necessarily wrong. But the evidence suggests that Apple's history of not getting it exactly right the first time matters little to its users (or to its market share) in the long-term.

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In any case, with rumors abuzz that Apple might launch another brand new thing (a smartwatch) during Tuesday's mystery-building event, alongside an expected iPhone update, this is a good time to review some of the history of Apple's 21st century critics.

2001: The iPod. Or "iPoop... iCry. I was so hoping for something more."

The original 2001 Macrumors forum collecting reactions to the launch of the original iPod is kind of legendary in its hatred of the device.

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"NO!" wrote user WeezerX80. "Great just what the world needs, another freaking MP3 player. Go Steve! Where's the Newton?!" (The Newton was Apple's PDA, which the company retired in 1998.)

In a second post, Weezer80 continued: "I still can't believe this! All this hype for something so ridiculous! Who cares about an MP3 player? I want something new! I want them to think differently! Why oh why would they do this?! It's so wrong! It's so stupid!" He or she wasn't alone.

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Elitemacor chimed in: "It's now at the online Apple Store! $400 for an Mp3 Player! I'd call it the Cube 2.0 as it wont sell, and be killed off in a short time...and it's not really functional."

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Idoru1135 wrote: "Not exactly 'revolutionary'. With the economy in its current state, You'll be able to pick up MP3 players for peanuts soon. The Archos Jukebox does the same thing and it's not blowing off the shelves either. $399 is just too much for an MP3 jukebox. Sorry Steve, this isn't it.."

Of course, not everyone reacting to Steve Jobs's product launch felt that the iPod was doomed to the rejected footnotes of history, like the Newton Jukebox player so many users seemed to like better.

"You are all a bunch of imbecile crybabies. I bet you haven't even gone over the specs and all you can do is whine and cry because you didn't get a Newton. Get a life!" wrote user "beholder of truth" before going into a lengthy rundown of the product specs.

And then there was this person:



Over at Slashdot, CmdrTaco had Over at Slashdot, CmdrTaco had this terse review of the iPod upon its launch: "No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame."

2007: The iPhone. Or: "They hyped up the iPhone for six months and built up our expectations, and then they grabbed our extra $200 and ran"

It is impossible to overstate the Apple fan anticipation that led up to the original iPhone launch in 2007, introduced in what many consider to be Jobs's best product pitch. In its original review, ArsTechnica called the iPhone "the device that Apple fans have been craving since the beginning of time." It quickly became the "Jesus phone."

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Upon release, the consensus seemed to be that that actual first-generation phone was problematic, but still poised to change how its competitors make phones. In a recent retrospective, the Verge did a good job summarizing what, exactly, wasn't working for users at the time: "iPhone didn't support 3G, it didn't support multitasking, it didn't support 3rd party apps, you couldn't copy or paste text, you couldn't attach arbitrary files to emails."

The original iPhone also didn't support MMS, and was nearly impermeable to developers.

All that was fine for the phone's biggest fans, until Apple cut the price of the iPhone by $200 just months after it went on sale. At the time, early adopters were furious, and it looked like the backlash was going to sideline the reputation of Apple's latest big thing. “They hyped up the iPhone for six months and built up our expectations, and then they grabbed our extra $200 and ran," wrote Kevin Tofel, a blogger and early iPhone adopter.

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Over at Wired, Dylan Tweney lamented that the cut was brutal, even for gadgetheads who are already used to punishment for being an early adopter:

I figured it was only a matter of time before Apple reduced the price, and/or came out with a version that made mine look like a dog turd (3G iPhone, anyone?). That’s the price you pay for being an early adopter — or, frankly, any kind of adopter, since in the fast-paced, innovation driven gadget market, any product you buy today will be cheaper, far better, or both within six months. But to cut the price by $200 — just two months after the initial launch? Steve Jobs, that hurts.

In the end, Apple tried to soothe angry fans by offering a $100 product credit to early adopters burned by the cut.

A lot of Apple's loudest early iPhone haters, unsurprisingly, were the people who worked for its competitors. Then-RIM CEO Jim Balsille was glib about the product's long-term impact on the Blackberry makers, calling it "kind of one more entrant into an already very busy space with lots of choice for consumers."

Microsoft's then-CEO Steve Ballmer famously said that there was "no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share." He went on:

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"It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get."

For comparison, the iPhone's current market share is 41 percent.

As a bonus, in that same interview, Ballmer added that "my 85-year-old uncle probably will never own an iPod, and I hope we'll get him to own a Zune."

2010: The iPad. More like "iDisappointment."

The haters returned to the macrumors forums for the 2010 launch of the first iPad. "Idisappointment .....Bigger fail than macbook air and apple tv combined... all those years of waiting and all the hype.... tsk tsk tsk ....." cenetti wrote.

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In the press, the company's first stab at the now ubiquitous tablet got mixed reviews, again for some pretty good reasons: there was no camera. The keyboard was only okay. There's no multitasking. Engadget's review explained, "All this power and very little you can do with it at once. No multitasking means no streaming Pandora when you're working in Pages... you can figure it out. It's a real setback for this device."

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That was reflected in the forums:

Researcher wrote: "Think only that PLEASE: The Mac Tablet that years we were waiting for, is a giant (not iPhone! it does not call) iPod. Revolutionary iPad=where is revolution? where is reinvention? A big iPod Touch. Thanks Apple, Crap!" MacDanny called it "utter garbage" and phatchat declared: "No camera = iCrap"

One user even appeared to copy and paste an identical comment from the iPod forum, possibly as a joke: