[Off-topic] RichardKAthena:
What is this, Kindergarten? "He started it!". WM as an open platform IS unstable. Look at the amount of trouble people have with it. Look at the number of newbie posts on here saying they've messed up their handsets. It all depends on your value of "stable".

MS/HTC has absolutely no control over what people put on their handsets. It's great. I love it. I also regularly try apps which utterly break the handset, sometimes ones which SHOULD work, because of the variations in the hardware.

"Could bring a network down" - without context, I can neither agree nor disagree. Supporting the newbies with buggy software, sure. Technology wise? Bollocks. WM devices may be variable "phones", but they do work most of the time.

In that context I agree with you.

Or buying CorePlayer and finding it doesn't work correctly, or buying games from the online Handago store and finding they don't handle screen rotation correctly, or buying MS Voice Commander and finding it doesn't correctly replace the phone's own voice tagging applications...

Third party software doesn't have to be "dodgy" to break the handset. Cracked copies of software are frequently fine, likewise, legitimate software can be buggy. It's the fact that the range and variety of devices makes destructive testing near impossible.

Ever used a Palm? Even though the Palm's original OS was small and almost "single platform", I had to reset my Tungsten C constantly, and the Vx I had before that. Inevitably due to third party apps.

Now. I personally WANT the apps. I don't mind rebooting my phone, or having to uninstall something, or make two copies because TomTom can't see voices on the SD card but is slow on Microdrive. I don't mind this, I'm fairly used to it, I like to experiment.

Do I think it's a good user experience. HELL no.

Newton failed. And I can hardly call Visual Studio and the CE development kits "free". Trial versions exist, but in a time-limited form.

Fine. Make me an Ameo which works reliably, has phone-like battery life, an 80GB HD so it has the capacity of my iPod, is small enough to clip on my shirt like a shuffle, has a 5" screen for watching movies on...

Convergence makes sense to a degree. Devices which do it all are compromised. iPod is an EXCELLENT music player and organiser. I don't want it to be anything else. I don't like the way WM handles files on the Ameo, or any of the alternatives; iTunes is very good at what it does. If my Ameo worked with iTunes - iTunes for Pocket PC, with sync from my desktop library - then I'd perhaps be happier with it. But basically no convergence device does everything well.

Apple will get phone calling and WiFi right. Missing out 3G is stupid and short sighted for a web-phone. But the user interface and build quality will be very suited for the real world applications of the device.

Two devices together works well for me. I personally like to see music separate - give me phone/PDA with GPS functions, or GPS/Music together. Phone and PDA functions blur anyway. PDA=contacts, appointments - big ol' Filofax. It's natural to link these.

As for third-party apps on the iPhone, I'm ambivalent. If Apple get it right, it won't need any to speak of. The technology isn't interesting enough to push. I'm more interested in what appears - to all intents and purposes - to be OS X on an ARM device.

An OS X PDA would kick arse, IMO. But then you WOULD need third party apps. OS X on Ameo-like hardware? Bring it on.

About that $950 iPhone. You didn't accept or decline my wager. Chicken? Not so confident that the $950 price is correct?