Paul Boutin's article seemed to me to be very much an apples vs oranges comparison. First, the iPhone is a first generation product. It's unfair to say that the iPhone is inferior because it's feature list doesn't match the current iteration of the BlackBerry. A fairer comparison would be to compare the feature of the first generation blackberry to the iPhone. Now, I can understand a consumer who is about to buy a smartphone making this comparison -- consumers should be buying the phone that best suits their needs. But, software development doesn't grow on trees. It would be very difficult (dare I say impossible) to match the feature list of a product that has been actively developed for 8 years.

Second, I think the BlackBerry and iPhone were designed with different users in mind. The BlackBerry was developed with the business user in mind while the iPhone was designed for a wholly different crowd in mind. To me, saying that the iPhone isn't good at doing business apps is a bit like saying that a hammer isn't as good as a screwdriver for screwing things.

To me a fairer comparison would be to compare the iPhone to the first generation SideKick. And I don't think the iPhone would measure up to it. I agree with Paul on a number of his complaints about the iPhone -- I just think the comparison to the BlackBerry is unfair.

Full disclosure: for the most part I love my iPhone. A friend made a comment that I wholly agree with: "it's 95% amazing, but the 5% that isn't is really frustrating because of how amazing the rest of it is." I'd really love it if iTunes would work in linux and if openVPN were one of the VPN options for the phone. Also a ssh client and google maps with GPS integration would be nice. Maybe that will happen with software updates (I'm not holding my breath -- for some reason people who don't have mac or windows computers are ignored).

Also, I've had numerous pointy haired bosses who used (and abused) their BlackBerrys. To me, BlackBerrys were always something that were doubly useless: 1) because I didn't have one and 2) because my bosses did and would frequently micromanage from them.

I also hate e-mail (especially in a business environment). Of all the great things that have become useless due to overuse, e-mail has got to be in the top 5.

This is amazing, I disagree with every one of your points, that must be a record.  The first Blackberry came out in 2000, surely you don't think that the iphone should be judged against a device that didn't even have a color screen.  And to say that it isn't a valid comparison because the iPhone was designed for consumers and the Blackberry for business users is to make the exact point the author made to try to prove the author wrong.  
Then to say that email is useless is just so over the top it makes it almost impossible to take you seriously.  Just for one example email is great for communicating with people in a way that doesn't interrupt them.  If I'm working on something I don't need people popping by my office every five minutes with questions that don't need answers for days.  Setting up meetings, sending questions to a list of people when you don't know who has the answer, communicating complex ideas that might be too hard to remember if explained in person.  I'm just going to stop because the list goes on for too long.

I didn't mean to imply that comparing a first generation BlackBerry to a first generation iPhone would be a fair comparison (I think the exact word I used was fairer). Honestly, I don't think the BlackBerry and iPhone are comparable. If I were to compare the iPhone to anything, I'd compare it to the first generation SideKick. My reasoning for bringing up a comparison of first generation product was due to the article being a complaint about missing features in the iPhone. Hardware was mostly irrelevant (except that software is dependent on having the hardware to run on). Instead, the article read to me like a comparison of feature lists. Unless the BlackBerry developers were totally incompetent (and I don't think they are), a product that has been in active development for 10 years is going to have a larger feature list than a first generation product (which has probably only been in active development for 2-3 years tops). The reason is the bulk of development isn't going to be for adding new features -- it's going to be towards making sure the OS and hardware play nice and to make sure that new hardware features work correctly.

Of course, new softtware features are sexy and they have to be added. But it's pretty hard to add the new features unless you have a solid foundation already built. First gen is like building a house. You don't worry about the dishes in the dining room unless you know the thing is going to stand up first -- you put most of your initial energy into making sure you have a solid foundation and that everything is structurally sound.

I probably shouldn't have said that e-mail is useless -- it's just that I've worked in shops where it has been grossly abused to the point of becoming useless. When you get hundreds of e-mails a day, it does become an interruption. Also, when colleagues ask me questions, I prefer for them to ask in person, on the phone, or over IM because I find it's very rare that a question can really be asked and answered succintly over e-mail. Too often it starts an e-mail thread which involves too many replies. The problem is that most people don't know how to ask questions to get what they really want and that some questions require more than a text only format to adequately answer (which is great for person to person if there is a whiteboard around). My criticism of e-mail is not with the protocol (except perhaps for allowing HTML to be sent over e-mail), it's with the people who (over)use it. I currently work in a shop where I receive at most 50 e-mails per week. At my previous job I'd get that many within an hour. I am a hell of a lot more productive in my current environment, not just because of the e-mail, but I think the lack of e-mail helps. My coworkers and I realize that e-mail is not the best communication tool in all circumstances. In fact, for most of our communcations it's the tool of last resort.