Oh believe me, I am NOT defending other phones. As I said in my original article, the iPhone IS undoubtedly a revolutionary device, far ahead of the competition in many areas.

All I'm trying to point out is that it's not without significant flaws. The trouble with Apple's hype strategy is that people tend to buy into the whole hype that the latest Apple device is just about perfect. When in fact, Apple frequently does quite consumer-unfriendly things.

I'm as big of an Apple fan as anyone, but I really enjoy looking at them with a critical eye, rather than buying into the hype stream. The way I look at it, as a true fan of Apple products, the best thing I can do is to encourage Apple to do its best by keeping it honest and consumer-friendly, rather than pandering to whatever commercial strategy Apple has going at the time.

Cool Dan, just misread your review. APC tends to be more critical of Apple stuff than of PC stuff in general.
I have to admit, if I were to write a review of the worst Apple device known to man, it would be the AppleTV. Under developed, inconsistently working and generally a pain in the arse to set up. Not one of their finest inventions, and definitely not one that falls into the "it just works" category.

I generally fall for the hype crap though, I fell for the Vista hype that MS put out at the start of last year, and was even one of the beta testers before it went gold, my experience so far, biggest load of crap released from MS since ME.

I know the iPhone doesn't do alot, but I also realise that for myself and alot of other people I know of, the "it won't dial the last dialled number" statement wins them over all the time.
Different strokes for different folks eh?

yes this is dead set stupid!

I enjoyed reading this article, food for thought....
I'm considering getting a3G iPhone but thought i might hold off if the next model is not far off.
Any ideas when in 2009 that will be??

For my 10 cents worth:

MMS
I want this. I miss this for the sheer fact that one sister does not have the internet at home and it's the only way I can share pictures with her given she lives the other side of oz. I'd prefer Apple left the decision to use this up to me, not make that decision for me. If you don't need it, don't use it.

Cut-n-paste
Don't need it often, but it's those occasional times where you do want to copy the long URL and paste to an email etc and can't that you really notice is missing.

Sounds
Why is it I can make my own ringtones with Garageband but I cannot for the life of me make sounds for things like events like new sms's or emails.

Camera
The software for this sucks, my old Nokia phone had the same resolution and consistently took better images, far more easily.

Email
Why can't I send multiple images in an email? Why can I not add items as attachments within an email? I think Apple's implementation here is seriously lacking, did they do any research?

SMS History
Would be nice to have a DELETE ALL button, annoying to go into edit mode (or swipe finger) to delete message groups.

Sync via WiFi or Bluetooth
The phone has these services available, so why can't I use them to sync?

WiFi reliability
At home I find WiFi connectivity somewhat lacking. One minute I'll be happily using the iPhone to surf the web on my couch, in the same room as the wireless router, and all of a sudden it drops off and back to 3G. That's pathetic!

Profiles
I miss this functionality from prior mobile phones. I loved the ability to say in this profile I want ringtones at this level (or off), vibrate (on/off) etc. I used to have a work profile that had things almost off but enough that I could check whether I needed to answer or not. Surely this is easily added.

Flash
Sure Flash can be annoying sometimes, but sometimes there are sites that I visit that are mostly unusable sans Flash. I'd prefer it be added, perhaps users not wanting to display Flash content could have an on/off button within Safari preferences to disable its use.

Battery
Not concerned about ability to change the battery, I generally get a new phone at the end of each contract so battery is still usually good by this stage.

On the whole I am mostly happy with the iPhone, the interface is great and functional, certainly better than non-touchscreen based phones. There are a few real oversights that I wish Apple would address, heck if they call is 3.0 and make me pay again I'd do it just to fill the void, but I just wish they'd do it. Clearly if people are jailbreaking their phones to add this functionality you've got to look at what your market wants and address it.

Generally I do like Vista when compared to XP, especially its built-in spotlight-like search functionality. I like the additional protection offered by UAC. That being said I really hate how long it takes to startup and shutdown, and how long it takes post-login to become usable. Although these have been problems prior to Vista also.

In December I decided I'd had the shits with Windows in general, sick of a system that could be running on a fast machine, but be slow as all bollocks because of the molasses that is Windows nowadays. I seriously think Microsoft needs to reinvent its Windows platform, exactly as Apple was forced to do when it released Mac OS X years ago. The question that needs be answered is will their doing this be enough with a market that's sick of all its constant security holes and widespread exposure to viruses, trojans etc, I'm not sure!