http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSB46553120080609

So now I’ve got decent turn-by-turn, combined with my FM transmitter/charger, so got full navigation and handsfree/iTunes, perfect…

However, RIM hasn’t really evolved their platform in any meaningful way over the years. Still, the only really well-executed feature of a Blackberry is that it does push e-mail quite reliably (it’s not perfect, by any means), and lets people type quick replies. And, the e-mail isn’t even that full-featured e.g. it doesn’t deal with HTML e-mail at all.
All the other features of Blackberries are not well-executed.

iPhone is going to wipe the floor with Blackberry in the next couple of years.

re: just enough

I think Apple has done much more than “just enough”.

The fundamental point is that mobile phone network operators simply aren’t interested in providing a good service to their customers. Don’t ask me why! But they aren’t. In fact, they’re mostly bordering on the criminal in the way they treat their customers - at the very least, they rip them off with pretty sharp business practices. It’s *really* common for customers to *hate* their mobile phone provider, for just that reason.

Every phone handset maker, apart from Apple, including the companies that will make Android handsets, cedes control of the handset to the network operator. As a result, Android handsets are going to be a horribly fragmented set of devices, and the devices will be crippled by the network operators.

Apple, on the other hand, has kept ownership of as much as it can, in terms of the relationship between the customer and the phone. Apple can update the phone software, and provides cloud computering phone services, and controls the sale applications etc. That’s going to destroy the competition, as phone software becomes more and more important down the road.

Prior to yesteday, phone makers could have taken comfort in the fact that Apple’s products were expensive, so they could undercut them to get sales. However, today, it’s clear that Apple has decided to go after market share in a big way, and is going to price accordingly.

MobileMe is going to be really successful, especially if they let people use their own domains (which it’s not yet clear if they will, despite .mac allowing this). As you say, if they add some more features, this could easily evolve to be a big Exchange competitor.

The other thing I’d say is that it would be surprising if Apple wasn’t working on some new kinds of Mac products; and so the company may simply not want to discuss new OS features that could be needed for new products (e.g. a really great tablet form factor laptop).

Or it could show a trend of engineering resources being less computer OS and more “cloud” services…… iWork for the web?

- Pricing options clearly much more market competitive.

- Interesting approach to “background” apps - doesn’t solve the all uses cases though - for example if you want to send info *from* the phone periodically it ain’t going to help - eg GPS position logger. They should do the opposite for this - use the single channel from the phone to an Apple server and then developers can access position from the server with the right credentials.

- mobileme and all that push goodness is 59 quid extra - they need to push the uptake of this as the potential stickyness of such a service could be very important down the track - the web app parts of the demo looked extremely slick - if they really deliver it could not just be ‘exchange for the rest of us’ it could be a competitor to Exchange - they just need to add a ’small business pack’… you see where I’m going - again head to head with Google.

- iTouch - clearly the iPhone in a Wifi world - so far they have been the same - I wonder if this will be the place for innovation first in the area of soft phone/chat.

All the Mac stuff is still there, just moved off the keynote, there are big announcements regarding Snow Leopard, but WWDC is also now three times the size it was before, reflecting how Apple is growing both retail business and development..