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I think HTC is the closest thing to a credible competitor for Apple in the smart phone business. Their phones are incredibly well built, and Sense UI looks quite good and is improving.

I was rooting for Palm, but it looks like they are unable to deliver phones in Sweden.

In my dream world I'd get a HTC built phone using the webOS GUI paradigm, but with the OS and applications written in a language which compiles to native code instead of JavaScript.

HTC has come a long way from the purveyor of crappy Windows Mobile devices they used to be.

My first exposure to them was a Windows Mobile phone a couple of years ago, was an exercise in frustration.

Possibly because of the software, and the fact that I always lost the stylus.

But when I'm looking for an iPhone replacement, one of their Android devices will be a strong contender.

My wife and her parents used to have AT&T Tilts (HTC TYTN II). Like you, they were very frustrated with the phones. Now they all have iPhones and are very happy.

Some of Apple's competitors DO make good products. They just do not have the brand loyalty and marketing power of Apple.

"Good" is a relative term, but I think here it is meant in comparison to Apple's products. And although it's subjective, a lot of people (including myself) don't see anybody making products with the kind of quality Apple does. This isn't brand loyalty, because I don't really like Apple all that much. They're far too evil these days. It's just hard to find anybody else making products that good.

Yeah? Who made the iPod killer? The iPod has been around for a long time now, why hasn't anyone come up with something decent that competes with it yet?

There are quite a few mp3 players that are superior to contemporary iPods on a technical basis.

But none that are good enough that their names popped into your mind when you wrote that comment?

Out of my head:

* Cowon S9 / Samsung P3 if you want a big screen

* Sandisk Sansa Clip (Plus) if you only care about music (cheap price too)

I currently own a S9 32 GB and the old Clip (8GB), and I mostly use the Clip at the moment.

Disclaimer: I used to lurk on http://www.anythingbutipod.com/ a few months ago :)

PS: ABI's Top 5 players of 2009: http://www.anythingbutipod.com/archives/2009/12/top-5-mp3-pl...

Question: why does that baggage matter to you (as a user)?

Apple makes good products. What do those products do? They enable people (i.e.: you and me) to do great stuff, without getting in the way. Stuff like programming and writing and designing.

An Apple product - to the average end-user - is an abstraction layer to all those other things. If the abstraction layer works, use it. If it doesn't, don't. Baggage has nothing to do with it.

Because it shows up on HN more than once a day. Because I use Apple products. Because I create apps. This Satire app rejection made the New York Times It's no longer just an Arrington rant anymore.

"What do those products do? They enable people (i.e.: you and me) to do great stuff, without getting in the way. Stuff like programming and writing and designing."

I don't know how you can say that with a straight face.

Because buying Apple products is voting for a future in which editorial cartoons are censored by a giant computer company with monopolistic ambitions. Even if you have to live in that future, it would help to know you didn't have a hand in bringing it to pass.

That's an emotional response as a developer, not a user. Not a logical response. You may dislike what Apple's doing politically, but if you limit yourself to using other, inferior products - well that just doesn't make sense, really.

>>>The only thing I learned from this is that if you won a pulitzer prize for your satire you can resubmit your satire app.

No. This isn't the first time it's happened and Apple was called on it then too:

http://ebooktest.wordpress.com/2009/11/09/another-day-anothe...

Apparently, after that one was fixed, no policy lesson was derived from it.

Given the stuff Apple sells in iTunes in terms of video and music, why this happens is extremely strange.

Apple's competition for a complete inability to make decent shit that is at least in some alternate universe comparable in quality to what Apple produces, minus a crazy genius' ego.

If you want this, lobby for patent reform.

Patents are not the whole story. I doubt any other company cares as much as Apple about how the bottom side of their laptops looks. I don’t think you can patent that.

I'm not sure you get that kind of attention to detail without a crazy genius's ego.

You can get it anywhere you take a normal, passionate person and then don't rape that passion with stupid bosses and committees.

You need the crazy dictator's ego to suppress the formation of the normal corporate culture of stupid bosses and committees. MBAs and marketing droids are like mosquitoes on a warm summer night near a swamp, and you need eternal vigilance a lot of DEET to keep them away.

The most valuable thing Jobs does is suppress the bozo explosion that invariably occurs at successful companies.

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2006/02/how_to_prevent_.html

Yes, totally -- but you presuppose that there has to be a large corporation to use passion at all.

To create a perfect global supply chain that produces complex electronic devices -- yes.

But not for lots of other things. You simply don't need the other people to begin with. If there's no middle management, you don't need a crazy genius to suppress its horribleness.

I'm protecting my passion by quitting all client work. :)

It made a real difference for me.

Or copyright reform, or cell phone law reform.

If you were, by law, allowed to unlock the phone, and they had to allow it, then 99% of Steve Job's crap wouldn't matter.

And the phone also would not exist.

That's a bogus argument.

Right, because if Steve has any restriction at all on his genius, he'll take his ball and glove and go home, instead of ... making a great product and making a profit.

Yours is a stupid argument that can always be whipped out to justify corporate abuse. Or any other abuse, for that matter.

Setting aside your attack on "Steve", the point I'm making is that no one WITHOUT A PATENT has developed an iPhone, or anything remotely close. Prove me wrong. I dare you.

How does A PATENT [sic] have anything whatsoever to do with whether people are allowed to unlock it?

I was responding to this comment: "If you want this, lobby for patent reform."

1> Didn't say patent reform. Also needed, but not related to this conversation.

2> Copyright reform could remove prohibitions on cracking the DRM, allowing people to install whatever and allowing third parties to legally install whatever and to legally bypass the signing and "licensing agreement" which is clearly a license of adhesion, especially in many states.

3> Cell phone law reform could mandate "install whatever" on devices be legal.

Already does exist. It's not going to stop existing if this regulation/law is made.