Â briand Yes, IÂ was being a

briand

Yes, I was being a bit cheeky, but Apple has to take a few hits, when their own marketing dish it out (the "I'm a MAC/PC" commercials for example). Fair is fair, though. Gadgets all have their flaws. Apple got a good ride out of the iPhone, but they (not that different from the recent MS Vista issues) have had their dark years way before the iPhone. I remember those years. Steve Jobs left for awhile, if I'm not mistaken.

The iPod actually helped put them back on the map, and I agree that was Apple/Jobs truly brilliant conception (I'm also a happy Touch and iPod Nano owner). I still have one of the original 1st gen iPods. Cracked the case on it to replace the battery and add a bigger hard drive. It still works fine, but only 1 year after it was new, I had to do the first surgery because of a failure on the drive (actually it belonged to my son). The major flaw was using a real hard drive with no shock absorbent tech to protect it. This on a portable player. The sound was/still is amazing though. Had to stand on my head practically to open the case without damaging the unit. Would have cost more than the player to get Apple to fix it. The Apple models were overpriced, and under-supported to get consumers to constantly buy new products. The life cycle is too short for the cost. Most consumers don't understand this... My son wants a new iPhone already (because of new features not offered for his model), yet hasn't even had his current one for a year. HP is guilty of this as well with some of the newer iPAQ models (especially regarding upgrade policy).

I have several iPAQs. The original Compaqs were better stability-wise (especially around WM2003), but HP still churned out a couple of good models after that (IMHO). I think the cooked ROMs (if you can find one) are better for the later models. This demonstrates (at least to me) that WM6.1 can function better, and HP was simply greedy to not offer upgrades. Now about the tweaking... You are correct that if you aren't into gadgety tweaking, WM touch-screen devices are not for the casual user (which I am defn into). It is indeed a matter of taste. I get tired of looking at the same screen, just like I get tired of the same desktop on my PC. I'm always tweaking Ubuntu/Windows/JDE on my computers at home, because I'm sort of artsy so I hate not beng able to tweak the Apple devices more than currently is allowed... I don't want to jailbreak until my warranty runs out completely, but feel that Apple should lighten up a bit about this.

VITO is one of the old-school dev shops that created great add-ons for WM from the beginning. Their sound recording apps were superb. After the iPhone came out, they worked hard to breathe new life into WM by snagging some of the genuinely smart features brought to iPhone. They were not the only vendors to do so (Spb, is another though the concepts are more original). A lot of vendors stayed with the same stylus-oriented layouts/screens native to WM. In many ways this was understandable, as WM touch-screen devices did not have the iPhone responsiveness for finger-oriented control. As you point out, WM can also be more sluggish generally, but many tweaks are available to improve this (check out XDA developer forums for example). I try to be fair in my reviews of software here and on our iPhone sister site... I agree with your points, but point out that WinCE was around long before iPhone. I disagree however on one point: MS did innovate to create a mobile framework that could be integrated and used with desktop and server apps like Exchange mail, and Windows file/database as well. They've had their good years and bad, like Apple. I expect we will be seeing something fresh from them in the near future. Apple doesn't own a monopoly on creating new tech. They simply took the "smartphone" concept to a new level.

Sorry about the long-winded response...thought I should explain myself and my review better. I was mostly just giving the Mac heads a hard time. If I could afford a new Mac machine, I would probably have one (I might get the Mac mini when my 5+ year old Dell finally dies).

Smartphone &amp; Pocket PC magazine - Comments for "Upgrade boring WinMo with VITO Communication Suite"

Â briand Yes, IÂ was being a

Smartphone & Pocket PC magazine - Comments for "Upgrade boring WinMo with VITO Communication Suite"