It’s easy to bash microsoft.. and it seems to be the ‘cool’ thing to do these days.

You are right — I don’t own MS products, but I have to listen to all the people at work who do, and it’s enough to make me not want to buy them. Luckily for me, my group are all on Mac’s. It is a cult following, I will admit that — once you buy an Apple product its hard to desire anything else.

Too bad the iPhone won’t check POP either.. oh and Exchange supports POP and IMAP, so there’s zero reason the iPhone couldn’t support exchange synchronization.

And for exchange being horrible.. um ok. There sure are a lot of organizations using it. It isn’t like there aren’t cheaper alternatives, but people choose exchange. Must be aweful.

I run exchange at home.. just installed it, never touch it. The webmail interface rocks! Before running exchange I had tried iMail (from Ipswitch) and IceWarp (from Merack).. both apps were really popular with smaller ISP’s. I ran them both for years and years. Neither could come close to comparing to the functionality or stability of exchange. You keep using POP.. it’s incredibly secure. lol.

I don’t have time anymore to ‘fix’ things.. I just install apps and they work. Your windows experience is Windows 95/98 days (Isn’t it 2007 now?). A lot has changed.

My Apple experience is from Mac OS 8 & 9 (and previous versions). Should I compare Vista to MAC OS 8 or 9? Seems kind of silly.. but you can keep on bashing.

And for Zune.. I can’t say anything about it. The last MP3 player I bought was a Create Muvo. At the time, it was about half the price as an iPod and it had more features. I use my phone as an MP3 player. I have no need for something like Zune. As far as it being a failure.. couldn’t tell you that either. Don’t know.. Don’t care. ;) I’m not such a zealot that I think everything MS creates is the greatest, best, most innovative product ever. I think they create some great products. The constant FUD against MS is silly.. especially when you don’t own anything from microsoft anymore.

Does apple create some great products? Sure! It doesn’t pain me to say that. I simply refuse to buy their products now because of their misleading and blatant lies about microsoft products. If they can’t suceed on their own merit, then they don’t deserve my money.

I actually think Apple would do better if they would stop bashing microsoft. It turns a lot of people off. It’s childish.

As for the iPhone, it is definitely cool. You probably won’t find that it synchs with an Exchange server. The IT people at work have a hard enough time with the Exchange servers, so I will let them speak up with they wish. It certainly won’t make me cry to not include the synching. I’ve already switched from Exchange back over to POP3 in my third week at work. Exchange was just horrible. As far as development support, there is no need — Apple will write everything you need in a phone. Just loosen up a bit, and let it happen. :)

I think I hear the tension in your writing due to the failure of Zune, the slipping of IE’s market share (and MS’s stock for that matter). It’s okay, though, I understand how it could be rough to go through a revolution like this.

Sure, your Windows machine works. I am sure most Microsoft developers can keep their systems running. However, most of us are not Microsoft developers, so we don’t have the ‘internal knowledge’ of how to keep the thing free of problems. Luckily most of my friends and family have converted over to OS X, so I don’t know how the MS stuff works anymore either.

As for the iPhone, it definitely looks cool. But no 3G, no syncing with exchange (even though exchange supports OPEN protocols), and no 3rd party apps, no development support (meaning no way to install unsupported apps and/or published api) are huge deal breakers for me. Looks like a great phone for soccer mom’s and college students. ;)

It is fun to watch all the apple geeks falling all over themselves at all the ‘innovation’. I’m sure they will be a huge success in Apple’s eye. Maybe they will have a chance of breaking 10% marketshare in their categories.

Last thing.. automatic update for windows has been around for quite a while now. No need to worry about the FUD you’re spreading. My windows machine ‘just work’. :)