Clamor all you want about RIM doing "the real growth" and Apple's growth only being so much bigger because they started out from almost-nothing, but this is Q2 of 2008, the quarter in which the iPhone was no longer available halfway through, and in the first half that it _was_ available, it was only sold in 6 countries.

Q3 of 2008 is when the iPhone 3G went on sale in 21 countries around the world (and more added along the way), and wherein that same iPhone 3G sold a full million units _in two days_.

Say what you want about RIM doing great, but Apple's growth is actually going to be a whole lot more than that 230% once the Q3'08 and — especially — the Q4'08 figures eventually come in.

Engadget should start enforcing some comment moderation against uselessness already. Hell, it's not that hard to write an algorithm to auto-detect posts containing only "first" and optional punctuation marks and an optional "post" or "comment", and simply not publish said comment.

Shuts up both the idiots who think it's anything other than stupid to post comments like that, but also the people who feel the need to complain every time someone does so and push actual comments even further down the screen away from initial view.

This totally makes me think of the waiter robot from Star Wars Episode II. No? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

"Who knows what the future holds? Imagine user-replaceable batteries and memory cards!"

The truly visionary thing is not having those; what may seem like a much-desired feature to you hasn't been much of an issue at all to the tens of millions of people that actually bought these devices.

"What, specifically can the iMac do better than the Blackbird?"

Run OS X.

Dear Josh,

"I don't care what Apple has to say about this, there is no way the AppleTV can be considered a subscription service if the iPod Touch is left out of that classification."

You clearly don't know much about business if you think so. Subscription-based accounting is not inherently linked to subscription-based selling. In other words, a company has every right to accrue revenue over 24 months from a one-time sale; it may not make sense to you, but it can make sense to the company doing so and in the case of Apple, it clearly does.

Also, the iPod Touch never had an upgrade to get the iTunes WiFi Music Store; it was released together with it. Only the iPhone had the WiFi Music Store become available as an upgrade (the Touch wasn't sold until the WiFi Music Store was released).

As for the whole "how will this go with the SDK in February" thing, my guess would be that the SDK release changes the definition of both iPod Touch and iPhone from "closed product" to "open product" — open being just like any personal computer where you have full legal control over what applications you do and don't put on there, and closed being exactly what the iPod Touch is right now: a product you own, but have no legal control over per the features/applications running on it.

Ty,

"Fair enough. Well I'll save my QQing for a year or so, by when many more people will have a 1080p TV and the Apple TV will still be hardware limited to 720p."

Apple TV is not hardware limited to 720p at all. That's merely the resolution of downloadable content from the iTunes Store; you can put your 1080p content on there (though not by buying it on iTS) and it'll work just fine.

That 20 million figure is Worldwide. The iPhone was available in exactly ONE country for the entire 3rd quarter: the United States.

That's why the iPhone's 19% market share grab _in the US_ (for Q3) is a perfectly fine and true figure. Besides, it wasn't Apple's figure, it was Gartner's.

"And why shouldn't Microsoft make the Xbox, it's incredibly successful."

By what standard do you consider the Xbox "incredibly successful"? Because from a business perspective (you know, that whole "making money" thing) the Xbox is one of the biggest failures in the digital world. Aside of a quarter or two, it has been nothing but a financial black hole that MS have pumped billions in and have yet to make any money on.

Popular (mostly) among the people using it? Oh yes, very successful at that. But as a business model, the whole Xbox operation is a $5 billion dollar failure thus far…

(not to say I disagree with the general point that competition for the iPod is a good thing. It is, no matter who it comes from)

John,

"(it doesn't have significant market share)"

(it outsold all of Microsoft's Windows Mobile phones in the first month of its release, though. What's that then say about WM?)