To each their own, to be sure, but I and a lot of people have about zero interest in looking at an iPhone-sized screen for more than about 80 seconds. (How do people do it, anyway? Hold it in front of their face, get one of those things like Bob Dylan uses to hold a harmonica while he plays guitar?)

As people have noted, the blindingly obvious response to Cook’s comments about physical limitations, which he made in the course of singing the IStuff’s praises as an alternative. BS that a 7-year-old can see through is really bad BS.

And the “junky” comment. My Asus has lasted longer than my first and last iPod, had considerably more use than the truly junky iPod. Oh by the way, I replaced with a Sony that got much better reviews, has a fine UI, has lasted longer and cost less.

I think my nephew’s had four iPod’s die in the last six years. I know too many people who’ve had too many problems with Macs.

Understood that the plural of anecdote is not “data,” but there are too many problems-with-apple-stuff stories to ignore. It is a marketing masterstroke to get a premium price for “quality” when a not-trivial number of products haven’t held up like my Asus, Sony, and HP desktops.

Cook; you’re a twat.

Keep touting the company line MG.

Ok, since you have obviously been out of touch for the past decade, and missed this conversation the innumerable times it has come up in every single Palm, Windows Mobile, BlackBerry or Symbian web site, magazine, book, forum, and conference, let me catch you up.

No, a PDA will never totally replace the need for a small portable computer for 90% of working people. There are too many conflicting design intents. The goal of pocketability and ease of use as a handheld device imposes too many compromises, which make it impossible for a PDA to ever function as a good general computing device. No matter what you stick under the hood, and how many specialty apps you cram into it, and how tricked out the OS is, a PDA will only ever work as an aid to perform a subset of all the things people need to do while traveling.

This has been tried by an unimaginable number of people, with every handheld OS ever conceived, with the advocates of their favored platform jumping through as many hoops as necessary to try and make their work as handhled friendly as possible, and still the results are always the same. No matter how good the device may be, it still does not obviate the need for a notebook of some sort. Really, this debate is almost as old as the web itself. There will always be that one thing you need to do, that just requires a notebook.

So yes, it actually is an entirely ridiculous thing to say, unless you somehow were dropped onto this planet a week ago, and immediately landed a job writing for a tech blog. Anyone else would have realized from the first 5,000 times someone brought up this idea, that anyone suggesting their handheld can replace a notebook, is obviously someone trying to sell you a handheld.