When Levy went to Newsweek, I wondered if his famed Apple access would follow him. With Fake Steve, reading columns like this, it's a safe guess he may not want any additional access that may come with the weight of Newsweek. He's a horseman, but I hope he keeps that outside, mainstream perspective that our whole little world of gadget review is a ridiculous one. [Peter Kafka's Brain]

Difficulties between Apple and Wired have been patched up since the This is the Phone of the Future Cover?, mocking iPod ads and kicking the iTunes compatible Moto ROKR while it was down. But will Levy's famous Apple access follow to the new pub? I haven't asked, but I'm sure Apple will decline to comment. My guess is that it will. Valleywag also chimes in with rumor that Newsweek, in an attempt to trim its headcount, is paying up to two years salary for people to voluntarily depart.

"Once you have a story like 'I had sex with a robot, and it was great!' appear someplace like Cosmo magazine, I'd expect many people to jump on the bandwagon."

"Massachusetts is more liberal than most other jurisdictions in the United States and has been at the forefront of same-sex marriage."

Gates on the Mac ads

"I don't know why [Apple is] acting lie it's superior. I don't even get it. "If you just want to say, 'Steve Jobs invented the world, and then the rest of us came along,' that's fine.

"It will be more user-centric. If you drop by a [public] kiosk or somebody else's PC, we can bring down your home page, your files, your fonts, your favorites and those things."

Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine.

Finally, Vista Makes its Debut. Now What? [MSNBC]

David Pogue's triplet of iPhone coverage comes in the form of his own hands on, an FAQ, and a video of the phone in his paws. From what I know, he's the only gadget journo that was allowed to film/photograph during his meeting. And it's funny. So this is the vid to watch. (And if you haven't seen it, here's our own, blog-exclusive, hands on.)

Walt Mossberg shows us why he's the highest paid tech journo ever, refusing to get sucked into the vortex of iPhone love: "I attended the iPhone launch event, and was able to use one for a little while. That's too brief an encounter to allow me to write a proper review." He did give a short preview, mentioning the same positives and potential problems the rest of us who touched it had. This is astounding, considering that this was all written in the context of a Samsung Blackjack review. By the way, I met Walt and Katie over the week, and to his credit, he didn't throttle me. A very forgiving man, considering I've photoshopped him onto more than one thonged body, when inspiration called. Cheers.

Of course, when it comes to things Apple, Levy, Author of The Perfect Thing, is the wild man on the scene.

Steven Levy's piece, called Apple Computer is Dead; Long Live Apple is not only headlined wrong, but is remarkable simply for the reason why most of his work is remarkable: Steve Jobs Talks to him. I cannot write more until Two bad jokes are made. This makes Levy a modern Moses, and when Levy calls the iPhone the Holy Trinity ("an iPod, a phone and internet communicator"), I just die thinking of how many times I can use that when speaking in reverence of the Jesus Phone. Anyhow, here's the meat: Levy reveals Steve's thinking on why Cingular ("We decided what the phone is"), why OS X on iPhone won't be open ("Cingular doesn't want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up."), and that real iChat isn't available, and neither is the ability to turn mp3s into ringtones, but that they are both possible. The ringtone issue sexy as hell in a legit device such as this, but fundamentally fucked unless Cingular decides to choose being cool over being rich.

Peter Lewis's piece at Fortune is called "How Apple kept its iPhone secrets". Those who follow Apple's product releases shouldn't be surprised. We all know that the Jobs and Co. have no problem keeping the loose lips from flapping. What's cool is hearing how Yahoo!, Google, Cingular employees were thrown off the track with spy-tastic techniques like 100% software development prototypes (not all that rare), and counterintelligence methods like decoy hardware models.

What other mainstream media iPhone articles have you enjoyed?–Brian Lam and Pchop by Adam Frucci-modo

All Things iPhone [Gizmodo]