The iphone is so great because Apple spent a lot of money in advertising brainwashing the public into thinking it was great. The business model at Apple is that, in part of a cult mentality. If you tell the public that the iphone is going to revolutionize the cell phone industry, 100% of all Mac heads will accept that as fact. After 6 months of iphone mania a significant % of those mac head cultists who do want a power cell phone discovered many limitations so they complained and Apple produced improved version. Yet it still is not up to the power user's expectations. The phone itself is quite limited under the hood but more importantly, the AT&T exclusive keeps the internet usage stuck on slow speed compared to the competition. The only thing fast about it is the wifi which does not use AT&T. The slick OS coupled with wifi makes it as fast as any WM smart phone.
OK so much for the bad stuff other than no battery swap and no SD card swap no stereo BT. The good news is that the iphone does indeed have a superior operating system and has huge accessible internal memory. This makes it a very power phone as long as you are willing to hack into it to make if free to do as you wish. Many have done this and even a commercial application surfaced on the market that, opens things up, called jail breaking. While this use violates Apple's terms of agreement, according to them, it does open the phone for many powerful applications for the power user. However, you still can do only one thing at a time. WM6 allows you to open many applications, have stuff running in the background and just plain multitask until you run short on internal memory. On my win Mobile, I can open an mp3 file podcast, be listening to it via BT headset in stereo, then while listening either surf the web or play a game. When a phone call comes in the phone mutes the mp3 file while I take the call. When done the call is finished and the mp3 file picks up from pause so I can continue to listen. Then I may decide to launch my stock reports to check my portfolio. The weather monitor is updating radar on storms watch and then I can launch my aggregator to download more podcasts. Finally, if I should decide to watch some TV on my sling application I can do that too. Tethering is also available.
In my way of thinking, I say that the WM6+ phones/PDA's are more suited for the extreme power user wanting to multitask and do lots of stuff from his phone. The iphone user is one who places slick style and OS, impressive GUI that is fast and easy above lots of uses. The iphone user doesn't mind having to pay Apple every time he sneezes but the WM phone user loves the freedom to do lots of stuff without fear he has violated the law of some license agreement, or need to make an excuse he has done nothing wrong while doing exactly what Apple or AT&T says is not permitted.
If you buy into the iphonemania, be prepared to be dissatisfied if you want to do stuff not approved, be illegal, deny you are illegal, stuck with a slow arrogant carrier, and spend money every-itune-time you use the phone.
If all you want to do is use the iphone for a few calls in a good calling area, get some e-mail and listen to a few itunes, or impress your friends with your slick two finger zoom screen on your photos, you'll be pleased with the iphone. If you get up at 2AM to wait in line to get the next upgrade to iphone, you seriously need to see a doctor.
Well, that should be enough debate fodder for starters! Hey, I'm no Apple fan but I do own a Macbook Pro, including Final Cut Pro and my daugher's inlaws are all Machead cultists. I also own Apple stock from time to time. I say time to time because owning stock without buy low sell high is like putting money in the collection plate at church since Apple earns huge profits and never pays it's stock holder's dividends. You don't make anything off of Apple stock unless you sell it high. Trading Apple stock is like gambling. You win some and you lose some.
