I used Wicket a few years ago. It wasn't god-awful, but between the irritation of keeping the HTML in synch and of trying to make a custom component or even fix Ajax behaviors gone awry, I don't think it pulled its weight in the power/complexity added ratio.

I'm 35... been professionally coding since the mid 90s ... I'm not sure if the next 15 years are gonna make me any more asirational than the last 15! What should I do?

Man my kingdom, or maybe former marriage, for some mod points...

I take it back. It was a little crippled; MMS shoulda been there. But overall, nothing else in the market is the combination of form factor, functionality, and slickness.

What contenders are out there? I've seen my friend's Android phone and I'd say it isn't equal to iPhone's first release in a lot of ways... and forget crap like the Storm.

I think the "gouging" accusation is dumb (not to mention taking pages of slashdot arguments).
It seems exactly parallel to what happens with Desktop OS, except on a faster cycle
i.e. you pay for Tiger->Leopard or XP->Vista, but get small patches for free... same as iPod touch. And frankly, Tiger->Leopard doesn't seem that much bigger than some of these iPhone updates.
iPhone users get it for free, maybe as a nod to the way they're paying every damn month.

It wasn't a crippled phone to begin with. And it happens to be the only product to seem worthy to followup on Palm '97.

Maybe if my 2006-era Windows Mobile device hadn't had absolutely retarded (lack of) screen lock features (any alarm would make the screen fully active) I would have used it for longer. But if you think the difference in UI is between Windows Mobile and iPhone is "just cute", you don't get it.

"Still no good calendar or to-do list. (And yes, I'm ignoring anything which stores data on 3rd party servers and requires internet access to look at.)"
I'm an old Palm fan from 1997, and I don't see where the calendar is worse than Palms... and the Avigo's Todo app is totally adequate. No desktop app, but you don't need any net access for it.

And as for the original poster... may if Palm had, you know, kept adding features to its core phones, they wouldn't have needed the reboot. (And it's obvious iPhone borrowed stuff like the home screen from Palm and not say WinCE.)

* tell me how many characters my damn SMS is at

You're kind of right but mostly wrong.

A single browsable market is a HUGE benefit. I had some WinCE device, I put maybe 1 3rd party app on it. I've done a lot more w/ the iPhone because of the single stop w/ great desktop integration.

I switched from palm to iPhone too.
The appstore makes up for most of what you post here!
Appigo Todo is great and moderately priced, I think there are some good web synching note programs too.

Custom conduits have, in part, been replaced with the high level of connectivity.

But for the first year of iPhone, yeah, it was inferior as a PDA to the good old Palm. The appstore more than makes up for it, though, IMO.

I used a PalmOS device from '97 'til '07. It was a great run.
That single tasking thing was just not a problem, save for specific apps, like MP3s (which I think someone had a workaround for).

And iPhone is only multitasking about certain things, and it's the market leader.

This is not a coincidence. Apple took a lot of great cues from the Palm, esp wrt the home screen.

Dunno if they would roll that into the cost or not.

Given that they charge an upgrade for simple text messges, or 20 cents a pop...

"More or less the only reason to get 3G at all is to be able to do video calls."

Way to generalize there, chief!
Is the only reason to get broadband to do webcams?

Anyway, I think what *IS* worth being cynical about here is what kind of plan pricing model would go w/ videoconferencing. One thing that makes the iPhone work is that it had a mandatory "all you can eat" data plan. The iPhone was nifty enough that I was willing to take the plunge to a more expensive plan, and the fact that it was a fixed price made me relax about using the nice new connectivity. Could videoconferencing challenge that? I'm not sure if 3G is "symmetrical" in terms of bandwidth... I wouldn't be shocked if two way video got its own per minute charge.

I know everyone has their own grips about what iPhone does and doesn't do (cut and paste is pretty popular, not enough landscape support in typing apps is my favorite) but they are thinking this without doing straight MMS? Weird priorities.

I agree that maybe MP3s would have gained traction on their own, but i think for both original iPods and the iPhone, you're greatly underestimating the power of interface; the loveliness of the clickwheel, all the major paradigm shifts and tiny little gracenotes of the iPhone... it's not just about "looking great". Not just style, not just prestige, not just hype.