[Deslock]

Originally Posted by SteveHoward999

Ahhhh the iPhone ... that thing that does what everything else has done for years. but with more pizzaz and a much more massive media campaign ...

:-)

Have you actually used one? I did last night and the first phrase to come to mind is:

Holy. Crap.

It's very lightweight, small, thin, and ergonomic (the curves make it even more comfortable and pocketable than the dimensions indicate). The interface effectively uses the available pixels (lower than VGA, but noticeably higher and sharper than the QVGA or the 240x240 found on most WM-based smart phones).

The capacitance touch-screen works better than any other I've used (I've owned 14 touch-screen PDAs over the years). Multi-touch is as slick and useful as the ads make it look. So is multimedia playback. Safari lacks flash and full java support, but it still blows away all the other PDA browsers I've tried (ajax support is there and google docs works, BTW).

The applications are intuitive and the OS is responsive. As in, there is no lag. At all. For anything. That last one is the real kicker... frankly I'm sick of waiting for things to happen on my WM5 iPAQ.

I'm no Apple fanboi and I'm not trying to bash WM. Like every device, the iPhone has deficiencies: While the EDGE network can be reasonably quick, it's often excruciatingly slow. There is no voice recorder, video recorder, GPS, installable apps, expandable memory, or swappable battery (though its life is excellent). Push email options are limited. There are still questions about how it'll work with Exchange.

So clearly the iPhone isn't a suitable tool for a lot of users. But does a hell of a lot of things better than any other PDA/smartphone I've used and its feature-set is actually fine for most people. Hate Apple and Steve Jobs all you want, but give them credit for this one... the iPhone lives up to its hype.

Of course, it's only one device and given the price I don't see it selling anywhere near 20 million by 2008 like WM will.