I really am not an Apple fanboy. I’ve been as struck as everyone else by the apple fan-o-mania, and the bizarre unwillingness of the converts to find any fault with the jesus phone – even when, it – frankly – sucks.

But I have to admit to being seriously impressed with the 2nd generation iPhone. I have no doubt at all that – if I could get it to work on my company’s chosen network – I would be part of the mob buying the iPhone yesterday.

The move to application platform appears to have been much better managed than when Facebook did it. We’re not stuck with a bunch of useless apps or a bunch of Spammy apps. Instead lots of nice, practical invention about what is possible with 3G, a big touch screen, an accelerometer and GPS. The Exchange implementation (Apple’s own work) is nicely done, and the ease of buying (apart from the very annoying glitches with service at the start) remains very seductive.

Who’s going to buy Samsung or HTC’s offerings now, when this is available on the market? Where has they invested? Well the hardware’s OK and pretty fully featured and nicely put together, but it’s the user-experience where they’ve made a real effort. Apple continues to work out some of the most complex ergonomic problems with taste, efficiency and style. People at Android and Microsoft must be wondering if they’ve got what it takes to make up the difference now.