My laptop doesn't care if I'm connecting wirelessly or using a cable modem or dialing up or whatever. Why do we put up with a system where a piece of hardware is completely tied to a provider? The only iPhone news I can use is the news that I can use it with Verizon. (Uh, yeh, no, I'm not gonna break into it, thanks.)

There are other mobile web devices that give you a true mobile web experience, besides the iPhone. Take the Nokia n810 internet tablet - it has a great web browser, and it's based on Linux, so 3rd party apps are free and new ones are being developed all the time. Plus, it has a real hardware keyboard. It's not a phone...but that means no service plan, and it does come with Skype. Apple isn't the only game in town if you want to take the web with you.

A couple of weeks ago I was telling a college roommate how much I love my mobile Google Maps. I can do local searches, display where I am (without my GPS turned on, I get a guesstimate circle based on the local towers), and all that good stuff - from pretty much everywhere I get a cell phone signal.

My college roommate asked me how much my Google Maps (& service) cost, which surprised me. I told him it was free (and then quickly added that I paid extra per month for wireless Internet - email, web &c. - on my T-Mobile account). I just read a review, went to www.google.com/gmm from my (Nokia) smartphone's web browser, and clicked "install." Simple.

I've got a bunch of other software on there too, pretty much all freeware, all written for the Symbian S60 smartphone platform. Not bad.

So now Apple are giving iPhone users what looks like the same software? I should be impressed? How so?

Don't get me wrong - I think the iPhone gets a lot of smartphone things right, design-wise. The UI looks faster and smoother than my S60's, and that screen's gorgeous (if slightly less detailed than my phone's). But my phone came unlocked, earlier, and cheaper than the iPhone, it does a lot more (thanks in part to a wealth of third-party software), and it plays well with my Macs.

I think what keeps me from being interested in the iPhone is Apple's Big Brother-ish attitude.

And I think you probably owe it to your readers to take a look at what's out there in the smartphone realm. There are other options worth considering.

Don't assume that if you aren't seeing it all over San Francisco, it isn't kickass.

Be sure to use an iPhone sleeve when you do.

See? I do care about your well-being. Just not about your curmudgeonly ways. =)

"That implies a certain expertise, or at least a focus in the world of technology beyond Apple product shows and press releases."

I'm seeing a great deal of non-apple articles in the last week:

Hasbro, Mattel fight Facebook scrabbler Scrabulous

Scientology fails to delete crazy Tom Cruise video

Mike McConnell wants to track all Internet traffic

Netflix offers unlimited movie streaming

Was the New Hampshire vote stolen?

It's official: Radiohead's experiment worked, kind of

The FCC examines Comcast's traffic-blocking plan

Peace is at hand in the pointless DVD war

Wikipedia founder's search engine gets bad reviews

Bill Gates' final CES keynote.

vs. 5 Apple articles. Seems to me like "other" wins. Especially when you take into account the rumor-filled week leading up to and including the MacWorld Expo - the event(s) during which virtually all new Apple product and software announcements are made. In fact, if you didn't read any computer-related articles for 2 weeks in January and August, you could avoid 99% of the press about Apple!

See, problem solved!

"I want to sleep with my iPhone."

Yes, you do. And you somehow think that news is important to tell other people.

You don't want to hear someone go on and on and on about their love of pornography, do you?

That's akin to what the Apple idolators force us to go through on a regular basis.

It's in poor taste, that's all.

But it's also why they're so much fun, and so easy, to make fun of. Just call into question their belief that whatever lipstick-shaped computing device they love is the best thing that's ever been, easily beating out chemistry, the wheel, food, etc., and they fly into a self-righteous tizzy.

"We've mentioned it as a mere bonus, but have not really considered that this is possibly the most revolutionary thing about it: The iPhone keeps getting better."

You've just figured that out?

Whatever happened to just being able to identify and acknowledge a writer's or a medium's bias and then just making up your OWN mind about things? When you read Paul Gigot in the WSJ, don't you kind of know you're getting a certain, shall we say, "spin" on things? Same if you're reading, say, Michael Moore's blog? It's not Farhad's problem, it's YOURS.

At any rate, this whole Apple vs. PC thing just never made sense to me, especially the nasty back-and-forth and even that ad campaign, even though I found it amusing. We have both PCs and Macs Chez URL, always have, and probably always will. Each platform has its pluses and minuses.

I will say, though, that Steve Jobs is the only guy on earth who has made me covet technology. Like, drool over it, desire it, have to have it. If it was just all that other stuff, I'd never give it a second thought, other than I look at Mr URL's box of tools down in the basement: we have to have it, we use it for important stuff, but it leaves me pretty cold.

Whereas I want to sleep with my iPhone. =)

... especially when it's something as fundamental as a telephone ought to be.

It's one thing if it's new features, but it's also necessary because the software is so fantastically complex that it will require constant updates to fix bugs, much like any regular computer.

More and more classes of computing objects that used to work fine are now things that require constant updating. I had to search the web to tell my father that if he wants to watch "Ratatouille" on the new Blu-Ray player I got him for Xmas, he has to update the firmware on the machine. Since he doesn't own a CD burner, he has to wait for the company to send him a CD. By which time, it will probably be out of date again.

I don't think this is a revolutionary development in technology. I think it's a pain in the butt.

If our devices ever become self-aware and blow up the world with nuclear weapons to rid the Earth of its human infestation, it will be because we allowed simple devices to get so complicated that no single person understands them at all.