The problem with anecdotal evidence is that it is skewed by the vocal minority of people that have had problems with a product. I have had my iPhone for about a 1.5 years and it has worked spittingly. I also use it as a development device so I would imagine that if the garbage collector was inefficient/didn't work at all that problems would rear their ugly head on a dev device.
Oh I understand that people are going to have problems and such, with my current carrier I cannot send/receive picture messages (kind of a plus in my opinion). I was more speaking of the lack of freedom the iphone has experienced with regards to the app store, I understand the store has very many apps but it is highly restricted and monitored something that doesn't appeal to me.
True, but I was talking less about the firmware and more about the anecdotal evidence skewing opinion of some product. But here is another anecdote for the world; My iPhone works well even with this latest update.