Response

@Stuart Duel

My use of the term Mactards does not apply to all users of apple products, only those that live and breath the hype without question. Most users of Apple products that I know are intelligent and are highly proficient users of many platforms, great programers and musicians. On many a forum you hear the chorus of Apple fanatics crying foul any time a product of similar capabilities or functionality steps up to the plate to get some market share. Always with cries of rippoff and stealing. Therefore one can construe from that type of 'vocalization' online that noone has the right to deploy similar capabilities and compete. Apple did not invent the GUI, who ripped off what now? I do not admire any company and how you gathered that is beyond me. Also, who are you calling a dinosaur? Apple has been around since the 70s. If Apple didnt buy NeXT, where would it be today? But thats right. Only Apple is allowed to purchase and rebrand existing products, put an animated and shiny theme on it......and have it called innovation...

As far as the number of useless apps out there, I guarantee that they outnumber the useful and non redundant apps. I was eluding to app count as a selling point over functionality. I have a few WiMo apps for time wasting at all times, but counting them as a selling point is pretty weak.

For the market share bit, yes it has been some time since MS has taken CONTROLLING levels of market share. But it does still gain market share here and there across many different markets. MS has many products in the enterprise for the backend. Great Plains for accounting, Sharepoint and Groove for collaboration. Xbox, despite its faults enjoys a healthy market share as well.

@Goat Jam

I do not entertain fantasys that MS is invincible. Any company can fail, for a number of reasons obviously. MS appears to have relized that they have been slow to react on customer concerns (specifically the home consumer based concerns), wants and needs. Thier primary focus has always been to the majority of thier install base...Corperate IT. Time will tell if they have made the process and focus changes needed to remain profitable and relavent.

@AC The days of being limited to using a stylus for keyboard funtions is long past. You can use any number of different touchscreen keyboards if you wanted to do so and most recent WinMo devices do include them. There is no doubt that the iPhone has both a better touchscreen and an interface to match. As much as those features give you, using your finger to write notes as opposed to a stylus is like the difference between using a GIANT novelty pencil as opposed to a regular pencil. Much less accurate or efficient. A stylus gives me better functionality for my personal needs. I am also far from dependant on the stylus though. I only use it for scrawling notes (which I can do much faster than I can type, reguardless of physical or virtual keyboard) and playing certain games which would be less fun without the speed granted by the accuracy of a stylus, Atomic cannon being such a game.

Any impression I gave of the iPhone being a BAD product was inaccurate, I just don't have an appreciation of it in use. I always grab my girlfriends iPhone and play around with it....... and i can tell you AC, it does work well, but it does lack some features which I do appreciate more. One being that I can do whatever the hell I want with my Omnia, not what someone tells me I can.