The iPhone is White Label Hardware

I think you are trying argue semantics instead of any particular point, but I'll clarify things anyway. When MMS, for example, has been available for years from every major carrier in the US on even some of the cheapest phones I would consider it a basic feature. The fact that many people don't use it doesn't change that. If that were the case, you could just as easily make the argument that text messaging doesn't necessarily need to be included because most people don't use it.

The bottom line is you can't sell me a so-called smartphone in a pretty package and sing the praises of all its bells and whistles when it doesn't have the features I use on a daily basis. When you can get MMS on a free phone from MetroPCS it seems like a pretty glaring omission on the iPhone.

I'm not just picking on Apple. I was using Apple products long before it was the cool thing to do and I happen to like them, but let's be realistic. I owned a Sidekick a couple years back and had the same complaint. The thing is marketed as this socially connected, multimedia phone and it can't even do MMS. The 4 year old POS Nokia I switched from was able to do that. The Sidekick was, rightfully, ripped for this so I don't understand why Apple gets a free pass.

It's an interesting argument the author is making, but it sure sounds like it's a bit of a reach at this point. Sure, the iPhone has nice market penetration in a certain demographic (who are more likely than others to buy gizmos) but I strongly doubt that you'll see companies that would have otherwise developed hardware, not do so. Instead, I think you'll see the flourishing of products with small enough niches such that if they had to build their own hardware, the product would have been shelved. This section:

Even established businesses seemed to disprove their own divisions: as tomtom showed off their upcoming navigation software I was left wondering why they need to make their own devices anymore.

is the epitome of that reach. Why does TomTom need to make their own devices any more? Because they don't want to add in an implicit $60/month data fee to use their service, which you have when it's iPhone based. Because if it's strictly iPhone, you can't give it to your parents as a gift so they stop getting lost. Because they make some nice margins off their high-end hardware, which they can't on an iPhone. Because they don't want to limit themselves to the (comparatively) small demographic of people with an iPhone who drive in an area with a cellular data connection, as opposed to the much larger one of people who drive cars that have 12V accessory plugs.

Likewise with the ZipCar application - they're not going to go iPhone-only, since it's giving up free market share. So they'll add an iPhone interface for coolness purposes and to appeal to a certain demo (which they probably do pretty well with already), but it won't fundamentally change their business plan.

The Pasco demo (focusing on teaching science to kids) also seemed somewhat contrived - who's gonna outfit a lab with iPhones to do readings? More importantly, what makes more sense for a school board buying a new lab's worth of equipment - buying sensor packages that work with a dedicated ruggedized central station that the school owns, or buying ones that require all students to have and use expensive and relatively flimsy cell phones of one particular brand?

So yes, I think that the iPhone represents an interesting new platform and will enable some new business opportunities (especially at the small end of the busines ecosystem), but it's not going to cause the end of all commercial customized hardware.

That doesn't even remotely answer my question. All you've done here is restate your personal preferences as if they were data. Don't do that.

you mean like the Xbox? I don't think anyone is really complaining about that.

> we have to surmise that either users don't care about said features, or said features have such flawed execution...

No this doesn't follow. It is a logical fallacy. Just because a product is successful doesn't mean that it has all the features people want. If the advantages of a product make up for it's shortcomings then people will buy it. By your logic you would have to argue that video wasn't a feature people cared about. Or better yet that Windows was the ideal desktop OS.

It really is sad how these Apple fanatics are so keen to point to a whopping 30% US smartphone market share (more like 10% worldwide) as proof that it is everything people want and yet when confronted with the unrivaled dominance of another product (e.g. Windows) they are more inclined to dismiss the users as people who don't know better.