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So... the iPhone, a product that has evoked a mixture fanatical praise and unrelenting critism in recent months. I am not one to jump onto trend bandwagons and am a firm believer that early adopters either have unusually high stress tolerance or are so obsessed with being ahead of the curve that they don't mind being the corporate guinea pigs that frequently get screwed over. This is a story that has repeated itself time and time again, the Xbox360, the PS3, the Nokia N95 etc. Equally the early iPhone adopters discovered not only a fairly rapid price drop but discovered at their expense the ruthless tactics Apple was willing to adopt to deter what they say as illegal modification. It has been suggested that apple had to act to curb to unlocking, not only to protect their activation and monthly income streams but also as a contractual obligation towards AT&T who paid for exclusivity.

But anyway this is old news, today I spent about twenty minutes playing with an iPhone at an O2 store and I must say I was impressed. My first thought was that is was a lot smaller than I thought it would be. One of Apple's strongest achievements has always been selling a lifestyle. The cornerstone in this is simplicity and ease of use; a mantra Apple customers have come to expect from Apple's hardware line. In this the iPhone does not fail, from simply outstanding looks and build quality, to a gentle gliding interface which just makes it feel like the UI is gliding on air. The integration with Google apps is also impressive as noted by several reviews. Whilst this is true it is important to note apple are not the first to do this. Infact java based midlets have been available do a while for a variety of platforms. An important caveat to note is that there connectivity features work brilliantly in the confines of the O2 store whilst served by their wifi. Real world performance and charges cannot be factored in but invariably the essential bandwidth required will not always be available and where it is it is likely to be costly, especially given the rather limited data plans included in the contract price.

I was impressed with the iPhone but there is no way I would buy one. Whilst the clean interface and the quality of the engineering may be enough to detract from a lack of more advanced features, it is Apple's policy of stifling F/OSS development coupled with a very poor security model (root/ring0 privileges anyone) which put me off. Apple will continue to develop this young product line and like many I am looking forward to revision two. It's a great looking product, but like a cheap commercial printout, look closely and you are going to see imperfections.

Like the majority of the connected world I carry around at least one USB stick with me. Since I use several computers on a day to day basis, I found the portable apps project an excellent way to take versions of popular programs around. This could be done before although it was very dependent on the types of programs you wish to carry around with you. For example, by default, popular programs such a firefox / thunderbird save their data in the root:\Documents and Settings\Konrad\Application Data\*Mozilla folders*. This clearly would not allow an app installed on a USB stick to be utilised at a different computer because the key information would still be stored on the first system. Its not just mozilla applications either, more programs would rather save data to the application data folder or to the registry than use the old style ini or xml type files. Portable versions of popular apps do just that, they have been modified either to allow data to be stored locally (i.e. in the program directory on the USB stick ) or modified to use xml type data encapsulation again on the local disk.

Enter Portable Apps.com, a central nexus of not only applications but a great little installer and management system. U3 disks are gaining traction despite some worry about the security vulnerabilities they potentially expose. With PortableApps you can use a regular USB stick and have a simple interface that pops up when the disk is mounted providing you with a list of available applications. This system suited me for a while as it was convenient and simple, however as time progressed I found a few key applications missing and the lack of custom launching distinctly annoying.

Quite by accident I found PStart. Whilst not graphically as polished as the PortableApp Suite however it offers a lot more flexibility including simple search and PIM functions. It is also possible to make custom launchers with a plethora of options.

For those who like the functionality of the PortableApps coupled with the flexibility of being able to launch anything with a variety of options, I highly recommend the freeware PStart, I just hope they offer skinning in a future version.