Of course, you can't write an iPhone rivalry piece without a laundry list of phones from different makers that "copy" the iPhone's features: touchscreens (zany!), halfway decent music player integration and storage space, and "real" (or maybe not) Web browsers.

And if rewriting the same "OMG adapt to the iPhone or perish" scare story we've been reading since January wasn't enough, the piece starts wrapping up with a standard "Hey, look at Asia for a peek at the future" anecdote to end with the obligatory "the iPhone might get people to pay more for phones, which is good for everyone" blurb.

I feel like watching the NYTimes.com front page load over EDGE would've been a more productive use of my eyeballs.

Rival Manufacturers Chasing the iPhone [NYT]

Here's the money quote: "Judged by the standards of a personal computer or electronics, that's odd: Imagine buying a Dell that worked only with Comcast Internet access or a VCR that worked only with NBC."

The obvious (and dreamy and impractical) solution is that Apple should've let it roam free, like a posthuman Jesus, from network to network, carrier to carrier, on "permanent roam." Right now, you can't even use Wi-Fi to make calls (a la T-Mobile). All in all, the iPhone isn't really revolutionary—it pretty much "plays by the rules."

Slate's second hater, Jack Shafer, can have his criticism of the iPhone-loving media summed up thusly: "So, who is craziest? The doofuses in line, the panting authors of the iPhone news stories or the recent purchasers of Apple stock?"

Well, who do you think? And how just rule-abiding is the iPhone in the regulation-choked wireless industry?

iPhony: Why Apple's new cell phone isn't really revolutionary [Slate]
iPhone Suck-Up Watch [Slate]

Consumers want touchscreens. Consumers want more media on their mobile phones. The iPhone's making everyone risk being "left behind" (said not once, but twice). But it's good for the industry. Some executive names in the entertainment industry are tossed around.

That's all dandy, but it's all dandiness we've heard before. More importantly, what does any of it have to do with the headline? Nothing, as far as I can tell. How is Hollywood seeking ways to get into the iPhone's world? I don't know any more now than I did five minutes ago. Gee, thanks New York Times.

Hollywood Seeks Ways to Fit Its Content Into the Realm of the iPhone [NYT]

All that verbiage can be boiled down to two sticking points: the lack of tactile feedback and the fact that people will have to re-learn (in at least a limited sense) their phone's method of input.

Point one is valid. Even Mossy has his doubts about the touchscreen conquering the keyboard. Haptic feedback would go a long way in addressing those concerns—look at the love for RAZR2's haptic-feedback touchscreen.

But the more interesting point, the second one, is that the iPhone "requires users to learn the new system, a task that Apple executives acknowledge may require several days." Helio's Sky Dayton is the primary mouthpiece here, saying that

There has never been a massively successful consumer device based solely on a touch screen. "Texting" is central to an entire generation of people... There is a generation of users who are always online and who don't communicate the way their parents did. They're e-mailing; they're texting; they're I.M.-ing.

There might be other reasons to doubt the iPhone, but an iron grip on input paradigms by this mysterious "always on" generation is not one of them. If anything, we're as fickle as they come, ready to drop old habits for new toys at any given second.

All that said, some haptic feedback wouldn't help Corrected: hurt. – Matt Buchanan

P.S. I'm only hard on you NYT because I love you.

That iPhone Has a Keyboard, but It's Not Mechanical [NYT]

The fundamentally flawed logic at its heart is that the effort to make gadgets smaller, easier to use and more people-friendly is one, a move to appeal to more women (rather than, you know, everyone) and two, that women need gadgets to be that way. As our six female readers can attest to, that's total BS.

The article goes through a laundry list of recent gadget redesigns that make them more intuitive, and then pairs them with a "female-focused" logic. For instance: "wider spacing of the keys on a new Sony ultraportable computer notebook that goes on sale next week. It accommodates the longer fingernails that women tend to have." Not because, you know, it'd be easier for dudes with fat fingers as well, or simply that cramped keyboards suck for everyone.

Lighter, tighter DSLR cameras, like the Nikon D40X? 'Cause girls need to cram them into their purses, naturally. Us mens like big, bulky cams. Entry level features? Not for entry level users, no, they're "designed with women in mind because they tend to be a family's primary keeper of memories."

Yes, that's right, making technology easier to use amounts to "feminizing" it, moving it away from "products historically shaped by masculine tastes, habits and requirements." Hell, Energizer released a $20 "Easy Charger" battery charger aimed at women because apparently the $33 Dock & Go model (male-targeted) is too complicated.

Gadget makers should acknowledge that more women—and people generally speaking—are buying and using gadgets (and reading Giz) but that doesn't mean they have to dumb down devices. Everyone wants gear that's easy to use—sex has nothing to do with it. To say that women need stripped-down tech is to be just as sexist as pretending that women don't buy electronics or play games in the first place.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled boob and dick-joke posts. – Matt Buchanan

To Appeal to Women, Too, Gadgets Go Beyond 'Cute' and 'Pink' [NYT]

First commercial: Nokia N95 hits airwaves [MobileMag]