Actually I got one for my wife for Christmas. She uses it for watching movies (the display is seriously cool) listening to audiobooks, and playing Bejeweled. Certain that it must be useful for more than that, I used it for some considerable time. You're partially right about the interface: It blows. Multitouch sounds nice, but it is the most frustrating interface I've ever used. It was bad in Safari, but I assumed it had to be good in other places. Nope. It's even worse in Google Earth. The Keyboard? It's ok, but not seriously better than soft keyboards on other devices. On the other hand, my HTC Vogue does, in fact, let me sync contacts, calendars and email OTA (wifi & bluetooth). It does let me control my Media Center. It play 3D games (not that I want to). It does let me take a photo of something and load it into an app where I can annotate it and then email it off. All without the use of a stylus, and all with, if necessary, just one hand. It lets me use the browser and music/movie player I prefer. It lets me create and install any apps I care to have, without restriction, downloaded from any source. It doesn't tell me I can't have a South Park theme or emoji, or a $1000 wallpaper app if I'm stupid enough to buy it. I'm no great fan of Microsoft in general, but they did get it right with WinMo, even though you need to put some effort into configuring it to get it to be usable. The iPhone doesn't give users much of an option to make it usable.

Actually, the only thing that really "happened" was that in America we built stuff first, had a huge investment in infrastructure that still works, and therefore there is little economic incentive to change or upgrade it (using the subway/maglev comparison, for example). As other countries build their infrastructures, of course they will use newer technologies to do so. As we in America have need to build new infrastructure, we use new technology too. But if the old still works sufficiently well, there is little point in tossing it out in the face of trillion dollar deficits. As for education, I think the point is slightly off the mark there, too. As education becomes increasingly expensive, it won't be long before it will be too expensive to get a teaching degree, because on a teacher's salary you could never pay off the loans for your education.

The availability of WM apps would be the only thing that could make me remotely consider an iPhone, assuming they run well, which is a long shot at best I would guess. If you're going to have a phone that is also a mobile computer, why would you consider a show horse over a work horse? Windows apps, on the other hand, seems a bit far fetched. I can already do that with LogMeIn.com on my WM phone.

No mouse gestures and no content blocking (not necessarily ad blocking) mean I won't be using this browser no matter what other features or improvements it provides. And no I don't feel guilty about blocking, nor should I. It's a matter of controlling what comes into my home or workplace. It's no more disreputable than throwing away the penny saver each week unread. I have always been mystified at the opinion that I should feel ashamed about controlling my own browsing experience.