One manufacturer's nightmare is another consumer's dream come true?

If these companies are soooo worried about AAPL; why don't they just roll over and die??

competition is king, may the best iPhone win!!

besides I'm sick of having a moto phone that fails to sync with my mac and tired of paying for a hip internet phone that is just lame...you know what I mean, you buy a product you expect that it actually does what it was designed for.... well so far by my rating my moto phone scores about a '2' at its' best...

So when AAPL releases its' iPhone in june, I'd expect that it will score higher on the meter then the moto...of course if it fails---don't expect me to be the lamb...I'll leave that upto the CE devices, ha, ha...

that everyone else is simply selling garbage!

"... iPhone may seriously harm the manufacturers of other consumer-oriented devices ..."

Competition is at the heart of our economic system. If a company can't build a better product - or at least a competitive one - then it has only itself to blame. Stop whining and get to work, wussies.

What I hope is that Apple doesn't turn into a Microsoft. May they innovate and compete well. But let's just hope they don't buy out the competition when something truly innovative comes along to go up against an Apple product.

well said . . .

Unlike M$, Apple got its face kicked in b/c of it's own arrogance in the 90's. I still meet people who hate Apple b/c of some of their experiences with Apple back then. And lets not forget that, that while Apple seems to be the horse to back, it was not so clear in 1999 and the following years after. The iMac, Jobs' deal with M$ for Office, a completely new OS, and the questionable PowerPC roadmap. Apple, despite it's new pride, was humbled and it's crawl out of a dismal future was hard work. Apple's new success is not solely due to a marketing campaign that has lead consumers into buying a weaker standard (such as VHS vs Beta), but b/c of it's products, which really are innovative. They didn't invent the MP3 player, but they did do it right with their focus on the user. The Mac OS has it's bases in UNIX, Apple didn't invent UNIX, but it took a proven, solid OS and made an UNIX like OS with solid UI. Now Apple is branching out, into TV and cell phones, and once again Apple is approaching these markets focusing on the consumers experience with the product. I'd grant that other companies may start out with that in mind, but the end results seem to be lessons in what constant compromises in product development can do to a product; Jobs is unrelenting when if comes down to the final product, he grasps human need for simplicity. M$ has never been Apple in any sense, M$ has never learn the lessons Apple has, for now, I have no fear of Apple becoming a M$. In to the future, when SJ is gone and Apple just becomes another company, well, that's an opportunity for someone with vision to fill the void, to become Apple's worst nightmare, but that day is not today and Apple's influence with be felt for decades to come. Perhaps a complete shift in the current product development paradigm, which seems to sacrifice the final product in the interest of profit, will shift to making a profit by creating a superior product with the user experience at it's heart.

waaaaah.

The comment was directed at companies who might complain about being hurt by the iPhone. It had nothing to do with posters here. Sorry if that wasn't clear.

While I can see the discussion of the iPhone (with many hoping it somehow changes all cell phones for the future, while the actual truth is probably changing just a small fraction of the market - at $500, you can't change much), the AppleTV doesn't fall into this category.

The AppleTV fills a very small niche, but that's about it. Without TV recording, music streaming, nor a DVD player built-in, and basically only playing videos bought from the iTMS, I can't see any but the avid Apple-fan rushing out to buy this thing. And remember there's currently no plans for apple to make the device accessible by the user (which leaves it to just the geek crowd to hack the device to add features it should have), I can't imagine anyone is shaking in their boots over this device.