Is New iPhone Apple's Vista?

It’s still exceedingly tough to get a new 3G iPhone due to limited supply, and myriad technical problems persist in registering and operating the eagerly awaited gadget. Apple has apologized for the lines, and the bugs in its new syncing software, but one analyst tells USA Today that the fallout might soon sour perceptions of the company as a whole.

“A star product like the iPhone does a lot of great things for Apple,” Rob Enderle said. “But when things go wrong, it can bring down the entire image of a company.” And Enderle has an analogy from tech’s recent past: Microsoft’s “Vista wasn't finished, and that's what the iPhone feels like,” he says. “It's been rushed onto market, even though it wasn't ready.” (More iPhone 3G stories.)