links for 2010-01-22

"The quandary I am facing is the one I've always faced in the Blackberry vs iPhone debate. I cannot type nearly as fast on a screen as a keyboard. I've given the Google phone a month. That's about as long as I've ever given the iPhone." – the quandary, indeed.

"The question that will be answered in the years ahead is this: Is write-once-run-anywhere the destiny of software, or was it an anomaly?" – or, as is generally the case, history cyclical, and this just a swing of the pendulum? there is no "destiny" to markets, no permanent end state. the rise of Microsoft post-IBM, the rise of Google post-Microsoft, provide us with strong evidence that what today looks like need not – and indeed is unlikely to – be predictive of what 10 years from now looks like.

there are legitimate, not too mention important, questions to be asked about the lock-in model. but i think Manjoo significantly underestimates both the appeal and the benefits of centralized account access.the paradox of choice still applies.