I'm the opposite of an Apple fanboy (typing this on a Windows box), but this is some grade A nonsense.

Sure, MS launched PDAs and phone-ish devices long ago, running Windows CE and whatnot but they were awful. It's absolute bollocks that the iPhone was a splashing success because of Apple marketing. It was a splashing success because it worked spectacularly well. Random non-tech people would randomly pull out their newest purchase to show their friends. "And now it's a notepad!" "Look and now suddenly it's a calculator!" Sure, your awful HP Tablet had all that, and a call function, well before. But it sucked. It felt like using a computer while squinting, and not like a magic calculator that can turn into a notepad and then into a phone and then into an iPod.

The iPhone was a success because it worked so well. And it worked so well because the technology was there - in part because they invented it and in part because they had the taste to not bring out a shit product but wait a bit instead.

This shorthand that marketing means a bad thing is actually not true for Apple. Apple's marketing is how it ought to be at every company. They do market research to figure out what users need, they famously came up with the iPod's click wheel, they don't just do the ads. Of course Apple is eminently critiquable, but its marketing division is what everybody should do.

Reading with understanding is absent in your skillset.

I exactly wrote that Microsoft devices were quite bad as they came too soon. And Apple came at the right moment, when low power chips were powerful enough, touchscreens were precise enough without a pen. And device had acceptable consumption, batteries had decent capacity, lifespan.

The Kin was pretty cool. Very usable with cheap hardware and cheap data plans. If the timing was a bit different, Microsoft might not have been tempted to commit infanticide.

Imagine having to go to Start - Programs - Phone, in order to make a call.