Doomed, Eh?

Best iPhone doubter in months. Mitchell Ashley:

The iPhone is certain to fade into history as another cool Apple innovation, that others soon rushed competitive, like-products to market, blowing away any significant lead Apple might have. The iPod MP3 player is an industry Apple essentially created, the iPhone isn’t. Too many major players are in the mobile phone market, who have and will bring iPhone-like products to market over the coming months and years. LG has already done so with the LG Voyager phone, and now Microsoft’s plans for Windows Mobile 7 OS have been leaked and described in considerable detail by InsideMicrosoft blogger Nathan Weinberg.

The crux of his argument is that Windows Mobile 7 — which isn’t due until 2009 — is slated to add a bunch of “iPhone competitive” features. As the Macalope says, “It’s amazing how future Microsoft products beat current Apple products time and time again, isn’t it?”

I also enjoy his putting the LG Voyager up as an iPhone peer. I actually got to use one of these turds for a few minutes at Macworld two weeks ago, and it’s a joke. You know the iPhone-like home screen? The one LG and Verizon show in all their promotional photos? That’s actually not the main UI of the phone. That’s just the interface for accessing secondary features of the phone. The main UI is just like that of any other crap LG phone, and one of the “apps” you can launch is the iPhone knock-off “shortcut” mode. And, when you open the slider, the inside screen has a third different UI. The overall experience is worse, way worse, than that of a typical LG phone.

★ Monday, 28 January 2008