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Not many people actually realise that Stephen Fry is not only the UK's biggest Mac fan, but a massive technophile in general and in particular has an obsession with smartphones. As he says, "I have never seen a SmartPhone I haven't bought". This blog entry is a fascinating précis of the smartphone industry. I particularly enjoyed the paragraph on the late lamented British innovators Psion and of its Revo, a product he launched at an event I was at, not long after I first started in the industry.

The point of it all though is that Fry goes through each company's contribution to the Smartphone sector, Psion, Palm, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and basically berates them for all being crap.

He laments the fact that all of them are leaving Apple to take such a lead and that none of them can get design.

"We spend our lives inside the virtual environment of digital platforms - why should a faceless, graceless, styleless nerd or a greedy hog of a corporate twat deny us simplicity, beauty, grace, fun, sexiness, delight, imagination and creative energy in our digital lives? And why should Apple be the only company that sees that? Why don't the other bastards GET IT??"

Quite.

Somehow I don't think I'll bother with the Sony Ericsson P1, which Stephen describes as, "a crushing, lowering, fury-inducing disappointment."

Instead, he wants the other competitors to rise to the challenge of competing with Apple. "Bring on the iPhone killers", he declares.

But it's not all about the iPhone, Apple's new iPods have also received a lot of attention. One fact that really upset me though was when I read that the iPod games that you might have bought for the fifth gen video iPod, won't transfer over to the sixth gen - Apple expects you to buy them again. If I'd just sold my fifth gen and bought a sixth-gen, I'd be furious right now. Though the code may have needed some work to rewrite the games for the new iPod, it hardly seems fair. Poor show Apple.

Ironically, having endured months of accusations of Apple fanboism it is Riyad that has returned from the states with, yes, you guessed it, an iPhone. I think, I've just been proved right.

However, after all that, the best news last week wasn't that the iPhone has arrived in the UK. In fact, it had nothing to do with phones. It was this - that Star Wars: The Force Unleashed is to be released on the Nintendo Wii, and will let you wield a light sabre, complete with sound effects and force powers. Wow. How great will that be? If it works out, it totally makes up for the fact that the game isn't coming to the PC. See, there is something cooler than an iPhone.

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