By the way, I like your diary.

Perhaps you should wonder what a drunken blogger would do when he goes too far and pisses off the majority of his readership by reporting bugs in Apples web browser which in turn crash said browser whenever someone visits his blog?

Perhaps he starts up a new blog, with a secret identity, in the hope that people will forget his previous indiscretions and garner a new readership. He may have given up the drinking but the tone and analysis is the same.

Patrick: The US is really the onlly major country in which the carriers rule phone sales. Most countries use one primary technology (GSM or CDMA) and then the consumer buys any phone they want and stick in their carrier’s SIM card. That practice hasn’t hit the US and American consumers are used to the carrier-subsidized phones (the razor blade strategy), and thus this could be a problem. So you could be right that in the US it could be difficult because the carriers could not be cooperative, but it’s the way it’s done everywhere else. From that standpoint, I would tend to believe Kevin Rose’s (jumbled) comments that the Apple phone would be availalbe through all the major carriers. Afterall, Jobs did get all the major music labels onboard iTunes for 99 cent songs. This is probably an easier sale, especially with the allure of iTunes bandwidth usage on the cell networks–because at the end of the day, that data bandwidth the razor blades for carriers.

Oh, and Zunny-Blowdog, nice troll. Apple is a “for-profit” company in business to make money. It’s easy to pick out Apple’s failures. Apple actually innovates inside those pretty boxes. Their flops are headline news. Every time a hack or piece of malware is found that can even theoretically attack a Mac, it makes the front page. Windows malware isn’t even news. It’s listed in Section C, page 5, to the left of the crossword, underneath the Police Blotter. That there’s a new virus for Windows is no more newsworthy than the atomic number of Uranium. (92)

Apple’s stock has gone up by a factor of 10+ over the last few years. In case you missed day one of Economics 101, that is considered “successful.” That is far different from saying that every product they introduce is a success. On a percentage basis, if Apple enters the phone market, your best bet is to go long.

If I could pick up my iPod and call my babysitter, that would be pretty swell.

All that said, I could definitely see an Apple phone being a new UI on Symbian. Series 60 is beautiful enough to satisfy even Steve Jobs, is rock solid to boot, and the latest series three has a highly abstracted presentation layer suitable for different formats. As others have pointed out above, the key to an Apple phone (and really, who says it is a cell phone?) might be an iLife player. Now that would be something other manufacturers don’t have.

Apple UI on Series 60 phones built by Nokia seems the way to do it, in my opinion.

Or maybe “he’s” a playmate.