I must say I am getting slightly irritated by O2, and their complete and utter lack of a product roadmap. As many of you know I've been after the HTC Touch Pro since before it was announced.

Catherine has had the HTC Touch Diamond for nearly two weeks (from Orange). Which when I was in Newport this week obviously checked out quite extensively. The short review: Much better than I had expected.

The Touch Pro, is essentially the Diamond, with a hardware keyboard, microSD slot and bigger battery, which should be released September time. My concern comes about from the complete and lack of information coming from O2 on the Diamond. They announced a new phone in their XDA lineup yesterday, called the Mantle (HTC P6500). But nothing on the Diamond, zippo, zilch.

What do I think is going on? They don't want to release the Touch Diamond because they've got contracts with Apple stating they have to shift X-number of iPhones, they don't want the Touch Diamond eating into potential iPhones being shifted, considering how low the iPhone's sales have been (despite the hype) they don't want to take any chances.

Newsflash O2: Apple will stab you in the back, like they've done to every partner in the entire history of the company.

Hopefully we won't get a repeat when the HTC Touch Pro is around the corner, it is less of a direct competitor. But if O2 don't make any announcements within a couple of weeks after another carrier releases it, it will be increasingly difficult for me to stay with O2. I'd be going crazy if I was a business customer trying to plan our upgrade cycle.

Maybe I'm too used the computer industry, where everybody (but Apple and a handful of other small companies who are too interested in screwing people over) has a roadmap. Windows "7"? Q1 2010. Office 2007 SP2? 1H 2009. It's nice knowing when something new is coming out years in advance, it lets you plan things. And before somebody says mobile phones develop faster (read: tested less). Sure, but roadmaps spanning 6 months ahead is easily feasible, it still takes over a year to develop a phone and carriers can make up their minds if they're going to be carrying something or not in that time.

Roadmap please O2.

Apologies for not blogging lately but I've been a little busy over the last couple of weeks. Anyway I want to touch on a bit of Apple/iPhone/MobileMe/Exchange stuff.

So as I'm sure most people are aware Apple announced "push" e-mail with their MobileMe service launched a few weeks ago which costs $100 a year, of course everyone, well those in the Apple Cult anyway, were raving about it. Apple dubbed it "[Microsoft] Exchange for the rest of us".

However "push" has recently been completely dropped, which has added to the continuing failure that is MobileMe.

Some on the blogosphere though are asking where Microsoft's consumer level Exchange is?

You see, somewhere along the lines of Xbox breakdowns, Vista problems/negative PR, and chasing after copying Apple with Zune, Microsoft completely missed the boat. For a nominal fee to the user, Microsoft should have created "Exchange Hotmail": a paid-for part of Hotmail that "brings your data with you at the speed of *push*" (my marketing tagline).

Microsoft already offer push support for Hotmail, and custom domains that use Hotmail as their backend, and they offer this for free, and have done for a year or two.

You see, somewhere along the lines of buying into the anti-Microsoft fanboy nonsense, this blogger forgot to actually check what they were talking about.

Exchange Hotmail would have been a perfect play for Microsoft. So in the end, Microsoft is left with a very popular online mail solution (Hotmail) yet has not made a significant effort to monetize it.

Yeah I think it was a good move for Microsoft. It's just unfortunate people like yourself either don't know it exists, or pretends it doesn't so you can claim that Apple were first.

But it wasn't to be. Apple brought it first because Microsoft was too busy defending its "server plays".

It also runs on more than just Windows Mobile phones (which have ten times the marketshare of the iPhone), but also on Blackberrys, Symbian and any other phone with the full Windows Live client.

Less of the reality distortion field please.

Well the BBC was on a little roll, but it looks like some of their tech journalists need a kick up the rear for this article.

Apple fans are waiting with bated breath - and a seemingly unending supply of rumours - for the iPhone Version 2.

Yeah, maybe it will get 3G like we've had everywhere else for years, or maybe GPS like we've had for years already. I'm sure they're keen to catch up.

The first iPhone has been a big hit

I wouldn't define having a marketshare of 5.3% for Smartphones in Q1 2008 a "big hit". RIM and Microsoft are the big players here, and in Europe I think Windows Mobile is in the strongest position, we've had Windows Mobile devices on the market here for nearly a decade and I often see Windows Mobile devices out and about, I can't remember the last time I saw a Blackberry, or an iPhone in public.

I think this video explains it all...

Unlike more traditional technology companies like Microsoft or Google which are run by geeks and have feature-rich and innovative products and services that are very extensible and customisable. Apple today is dominated by the marketing department, as a result we get feature-poor, often buggy and insecure products that are locked-down to end-user customisation, but they can get the press on side thanks to their slick propaganda department and as a result, some people drink the kool-aid.

Of course some people, even Apple fans can get passed it sometimes and see the light, like when Nik Cubrilovic tried Windows Vista.

I have been running Vista for a little less than 24 hours and I can't believe I didn't switch back sooner, the main difference is that the interface is much much smoother and neater and despite popular belief performance is actually fantastic. I was used to waiting on Mac OS X while my standards apps would open up - Quicksilver, Firefox, Skype, etc. but Vista goes almost straight into the desktop and most apps boot very quickly.

I didn't expect it to be like this, I didn't want Vista to be this good - I was expecting to boot back into OS X and living happily ever after, but damn, this is one fast, slick and nice operating system.

The bottom line is, no matter how much hype Apple's marketing department can generate, and how much they attack their competition in adverts, they're years behind what Microsoft and others have done.

The iPhone lacks the following commonly found features:

Songs as ringtones
Games
Any flash support
Instant Messaging
MMS support (picture and video messages)
Video recording
Voice recognition or voice dialing
Wireless Bluetooth Stereo Streaming (A2DP)
3G
A real keyboard
Removable battery
Expandable Storage

Talk about a version 0.1 product, way to release an engineering sample Apple. Why the hype? My dinosaur phone from the 17th century could do half of that stuff, for an 8th the cost.

It also lacks things found on Windows Mobile devices, like voice recognition, so things like asking the phone what track is currently playing and it speaking back to you (using something like Voice Command) is out of the question, being able to copy and paste text, being able to install 3rd party applications. Oh and the operating system uses a whopping 700MB of the hard drive.

All hype, no substance.

Has anybody else noticed that the Mac zealots seem to be getting dumber lately? I spotted this (via Channel 9) on MacDailyNews:

MacDailyNews Take: The IT guys are in for a rude awakening and the iPhone is only the beginning. They will have to accommodate the iPhone. Too many important employees will demand it and IT won't be able to stem the tide. The fact is that business people will decide which device they want to carry and their businesses will adapt to it. Just as they did with "Microsoft-incompatible" Research In Motion's Blackberry. Apple's iPhone will be a success with business users whether the IT guy wants it or even whether AT&T and Apple tailor marketing to businesses or not.

Note to CEOs: Who runs the company, you or the IT guy? It's your job to make the decisions and it's the IT guy's job to implement your decisions that relate to technology. Just as with Macs, you need to educate yourself instead of relying on someone with their own, possibly hidden, agendas to make extremely important technology decisions for your company. Most of you could be saving a LOT of money right now, but you aren't because you've delegated an important part of your company's decision-making to people who, frankly, in our experience, aren't capable of making good, sound, strategic, long-term decisions. Most IT guys (and we know many) are not open-minded enough to be able to consider new, better, more effficient, more effective options that would benefit your company. In fact, most IT guys we've met will throw up road blocks and repeat myths until they're blue in the face in order to avoid change. Especially change that might make their department less critical or smaller. Bottom line: most of you CEOs have given the IT guy way, way, way too much power. It's time to take it back.

The iPhone in a corporate environment? Have they lost their minds. The iPhone just isn't built around that sort of environment. Businesses don't use Yahoo! to handle their e-mail, most businesses use Outlook and Exchange, does the iPhone sync with Outlook? No. Employees who need e-mails pushed to their devices like with Blackberries and Windows Mobile devices are out of luck with the iPhone, I guess they'll visit Yahoo! Mail, or try and jiggle up POP3, and hope they don't have many e-mails waiting, the iPhone lacking 3G and only having Wi-Fi when you sign up for an AT&T data plan would make that rather painful. Then what about security? Oh dear, stolen or lost iPhone with corporate data on? Devices for the corporate market have security, Windows Mobile devices can be set to erase if the password is entered incorrectly.

Then they have the nerve to call "most IT guys" not open-minded enough. The fact is these Mac zealots of closed-minded to the possibility that their platform, well it's not even a platform, their phone isn't for businesses. Worse still they urge CEOs to take charge of IT in companies, yeah put somebody who probably isn't an expert in technology in charge of the IT department, great call and fantastic business sense there.