“these influential people in all their greatness, are bailing on the most important platform and piece of technology this world has seen, arguably since the mac.”

The flaw in your main argument is that just because a piece of technology is important, groundbreaking, or whatever, does not mean that all of its ancestors will not be as good. I’m willing to bet that you do not drive a Model T Ford to work every day.

The market is catching up and soon there will be phones that outshine the iPod…but perhaps you are blinded by the iPod’s once brilliant allure.

Oh, let me point out something else to you: The ONLY positive reason you gave for loving the iphone is not liking the G1 and Treo 650. All your other reasons were reasons to get a pc, not a mac:)

You want to talk about producing something that actually changed the way every person in this country functions: Windows. Yes, I know, Microsoft stole the whole OS GUI from you Apple freaks. But it affected the way virtually every business ran. It has in someway affected 100’s of millions of people from Wall Streets ability to globalize our economy to the people in Kenya that make $1.25 a month but can now get their voter registration card on the side of the road in the middle of now where because of the Windows based laptops now available.

You want to compare Apple and Microsoft? Apple is better at keeping secrets. Apple is better at selling you something you don’t need. Apple is better at avoiding antitrust lawsuits. Steve Jobs should be proud.

And are you angry at Google for offering a quality free service or are you mad at Apple for preventing you from using it on their product? Don’t make a judgment about a product when all you know is that Apple doesn’t like it.

Oh, don’t forget, Blackberry and Palm revolutionized the smartphone. Apple added a shiny screen, miniaturized multi-touch screen, a way for people to spend money they don’t even realize they are spending by buying applications and games so they can crash their cars/trucks while not paying attention and walk into people in the streets because they are looking at their iphones instead of where they are going, a culture where people will pay for promises instead of deliverables, and created the Gucci bag of the decade that for some reason people think they need to have to be ‘cool.’

You should stop being angry and insulting people because they have woken up and no longer need the iphone to prove to others they are deserving of attention. People jump off the bandwagon when they see what things really are and luckily for those who still have a need for all the iphone like features, there are other options.

BTW: I have a G5 and an iPod that I have stopped using when I was introduced to superior products that use open standards and give me control of the device instead of an Apple executive.

I’ve had my loyalty with Apple tested on a number of occasions. My first taste of the burn was the additional costs levied against touch users, of which i was one, for the email software update. As someone with a good business head and a decent understanding of accountancy, I was only too aware that this was profiteering akin to dipping into my childrens money boxes-I was disgusted.

The second occasion involved a number of 3G iphones with severe cracking on the rear of the case. After 2 quick successive cracks appearing on replacement iphones, my third phone was supplied to me with a note explaining that Apple were billing me some £395- oh how nice i thought when reading the curt generic note issued to all would-be iphone abusers.

When I queried this on the phone I was shouted at for questioning the note and was eventually told it was because the phone returned was water damaged. They also kindly returned this original iphone loose in a plastic courier bag, beaten to pieces from no protective box or bubble wrap, which I also thought was nice!

After threatening to go down the legal route (basically when Apple asked me to prove I hadn’t caused it, I asked Apple to prove it wasn’t like this when they’d sent it out as a replacement) I had someone senior in the PR dept call and offer me £100 store credit and apologised. Sure I’d made threats to out this finest hour of Apple customer care to the media, pointing out the £24,000 I’d spent with Apple over 2 years.

Now I can assure you, I’m not a sadist i didn’t endure this fustration for fun, but put simply this is the most amazing device I’ve ever owned. I lived with a WinMo phone for 3 years and bar it falling to pieces on me (O2 Atom by HTC) it proved to be the biggest cause of daily frustration, far worse than the incident with Apple. The difference being Apple had hurt my feelings and disappointed me, the WinMo phone was just out to piss me off, trying to beat my logic with that of it’s own befuddled OS. I’d spend at least 2 hours a week with our inhouse IT support trying to fix something and feel it directly contributed to me leaving.

I think the true issue here is not Apple’s iphone but Apple’s approach. It needs to become more glasnostic…christ I’m a child of the 80’s and a bit of openness never goes amiss. Their current position, which I’m sure has numerous legal advantages makes it easy for them to fall into a position of contempt with the heartland of fans who being honest have helped them weather the storm of the 90’s.

I appreciate Apple needs to remain secretive on some fronts,especially around innovation and new product development, but is someone really telling me that they couldn’t produce a simple one page PDF showing what new Apps are judged on? I’ve always challenged systems which I felt were idiotic and never accept the bureaucratic “Computer says NO!” styled excuses. Apple it quite clearly doesn’t work right now so fix it! Programmers are not mind readers, they do not know you’re developing functionality X behind closed doors. Don’t penalize people, they’re either invited to the party or their not. I’m a big boy, I can cope with shit and fuck appearing in apps, if a 7 year old has an iphone and has access to this, isn’t that a parenting issue?

But back to the iphone. I’m sticking with it because it enriches my life, makes things easier and gives me joy. No mobile device has ever come close to this digital nirvana for me personally but I will respect the rights of others to ‘Think Differently’.

Matt

Speaking as someone with an iPhone 3G and a BlackBerry Bold, yes – there are some things that other phones just do a little bit better. I can type the crap out of a long email on the BB, my iPhone emails are shorter and sweeter. IMHO the BB makes a slightly clearer phone call and I can dial it without looking at it. And that’s where the advantages end.

I had the misfortune of finally getting to play with an Android G1 the other day and the experience left me wanting my old Palm Treo 650. WinMo? Uh huh – that makes sense. A full decade of failure in the palm of your hand. Sign me up.

My guess here is that there are a certain amount of people in tech-blog-land that see the iPhone becoming the mobile device of choice, see 12 year olds walking about with them, and suddenly feel like they themselves aren’t very high-tech anymore. I get it. We were special people when we all have the first iPhone, now we’re all just another asshole with an all-too-common phone. Bummer.

Damn you Apple. Damn you for being successful.