[Alex Alexzander]

iPhone certainly looks cool. I think the look will impress many. But that lasts only so long. In the end, it's the quality of the experience that really keeps a customer in any company's court.

With BB, you have direct access to Lotus Notes, Exchange, or GroupWise. With iPhone, you'd have open up the company to standard ports like POP3 and IMAP, and thus invite spam, and insecure snoopers into your corporate network. All because someone on the payrole wants to play with their telephone.

Push email is in itself, a killer-app. I have had many mobile devices, and in my humble opinion, there is nothing like push email. I don't check for mail, I am told when it has arrived. Which means I am totally free to do what I need to do until such time as the phone tells me someone is trying to reach me. Kids won't care for that, but I think most business uers will soon miss that if they moved to the lame phone. Oh sorry, iPhone.

Now, I can't speak for everyone here, but email to me is a huge part of the BB. I type on busses, trains, a few times even while walking. I don't a for a second believe I will be anywhere near as fast on email with the iPhone as I am with the BB.

Software

Anyone with Telenav on the BB can tell you, it's a killer-app. Those days of being two blocks from an address you just can't find anyway are over with such a feature. I started using it once or twice, and then started to see just how good it was, and now that alone kills the iPhone for me. No telenav, no sale.

Do you honestly think you'd actually watch full movies on the iPhone? I have a PSP, and I bring it with me on trips. I have quite a few UMD movies. From San Francisco to New York, I got past one movie on the PSP, and then opted to watch another on the seat-back option for $4.95. I didn't have to hold the PSP upright anymore, and I could fall asleep and not worry about dropping my expensive toy. You'll soon see what I see. It's tedious to hold a small device for 2 hours watching a program. You'll soon discover audio books are better, and guess what, those don't need a screen. And then after you start paying $34 per book, you'll discover that the same book can be bought for $7.95 at any airport, and you don't have to sync them. And if you lose it, who cares, just buy it again, it was only $7. So take my advice and cut to the chase. We really just need basic services that work extremely well. Email, Phone, and a little help when we are lost. In every case, I see the BB as the stronger product.

Am I saying iPhone will be a non-starter? No, I am sure lots of clueless kids will rush oout and spend every last bit of their Burger King income to buy one. But seriously, how long will that last? How long until they get tired of paying what we pay monthly for the services we so easily justify for business? Pretty soon they will give up data, cut their minutes, and that pretty phone will become a boat anchor.

In my humble opinion, only business users can truly afford these fees for extended periods of time. We get a return on this investment that goes beyond cool.

Witness my friends that months ago claimed to have forund the perfect cell phone... again. Now all of the sudden, their cell phone sucks, and they want iPhones. I give em 6 months of high fees before I hear the old, "my cell phone sucks" line again.

Are they really going to want to spend time reading web pages on a 3" screen? Come on... I get basic news via RSS, and I do that for less than maybe 15 minutes a day. Is it really so bad on the BB? Or is it just that the iPhone looks so cool, that you have to have one? How long does cool last?

What about add on software? I have an Oxford Dictionary on my BB. I use that quite often too. I'd miss it. I have IM+ and IM+ for Skype. Can't get either one of those for the iPhone.

So let me see if I understand all this iPhone hype. You get less features, less software, no push email, no GPS, no ability to replace the battery while waiting for your plane to board, and you can't type messages ona real keyboard, and for some reason, all of that is okay? Since when? Man, Jobs is good if he is able to sell you less features for more money, and make you desire it at the same time. Hell, I should hire him to sell our products!

-Alex Alexzander