Why iPhone?

I'm actually not an Apple fan. They make some fine products, but I've always been a bit turned off by the cult of Apple. I'm also turned off by the corporate arrogance of Apple.

Let's face it, if Microsoft created a computing platform and you could only buy software from Microsoft, there would be an outcry. That is basically what Apple is doing with the iTunes store. In fact, they recently took it one step further by claiming it is illegal to install your own software on your iPhone.

So why iPhone? It works and works pretty well. It was simple to set up and integrate with Exchange server. The browser is the best mobile browser. The user interface is probably the best out there so far for a mobile device. The only thing missing is copy and paste and I'll admit that is a fairly big gap.

Will it be iPhone forever? Probably not. Apple was a leader with the user interface on the original Macintosh, but it didn't take long for other systems to catch up. I expect other mobile device makers to continue to innovate.

Probably the one that holds the most promise is the Google Android platform. Unless Apple improves the situation with the iTunes application store, I expect Android to take the lead among users of mobile applications. (The iPhone may continue to lead with those who just want a cool phone or use the basic applications and iPod features.)

I know of at least one case where an Android application has been released before the iPhone app, even though the iPhone application came out 3 months earlier.

Even though the iPhone faces some challenges for serious mobile applications, there is one good thing about it--it supports Google applications reasonably well. That means I can do something on my PC and access it immediately on my iPhone. It's not perfect, but its good enough for me.