Except to make your analogy correct, the twenty different brands of ketchup will have to only be compatible with its own brand of hot dogs, and it's own brand of hot dog buns.

All these patchwork cloud services can bite my ass.

If AT&T paid *me* on a monthly basis to use it, I'd get one.

I get his point.

It sounds like Nokia and AT&T dropped the ball on the supply chain management side, which frankly, considering Nokia's specialty in that area, is surprising.

Yahoo is likely just slimming down in order to be a better acquisition target.

The problem is that you need the Zune software for a lot of the functionality of a Windows Phone device.

I like Windows Phone too, although come on WinPhans, there *are* still fairly large issues with the platform. Nobody that isn't a totally blind fanboy can say that there aren't problems that need to get worked out.

"Windows is new to the smart phone game."

Well, you can't tell much at all on a Windows Phone demo model. Almost everything I tried to do when I played with a Lumia and Titan II yesterday, asked me to sign in with an ID, or sync.

But if I take it, then return it, I'll lose my grandfathered unlimited data plan. Been riding on unlocked phones, out of contract now for over a year.

Agreed.

I agree.

I played with a Titan II in a store yesterday, along with a Lumia 900.

Not all the tiles are live.

I had a day off from work yesterday, so I took a stroll in my neighborhood, bought some groceries, and stopped into a local AT&T corporate store to check out what all the brou-ha-ha was about with the Lumia and Windows Phone.

Maybe they can increase the flash on-board storage to 128 GB? They can then retire their iPod Classic with the 160 GB hard drive.

Illegal, shmillegal.

While I likewise hate the ever increasing prices and gouging of the big cable providers/ISPs, I probably couldn't go long without live sports.

That's it's main downfall, I fear: the Lumia's MO seems to be, 'Nice phone, but doesn't do anything that the other phones can't do'.