Why will Apple not do a useful application like “Memos” & “Tasks” so you can separate things instead of having to do everything in “Notes”.

The competitors are being run over by a giant snowball that keeps getting larger.

There really is nothing they can do.

Apple is competing with an ecosystem – hardware, operating system, software, 3rd party applications, 3rd party accessories, desktop software, iTunes music-movie-app store, Me.com services, Macintosh laptops and desktops, 3rd party hardware, rabid fans, coolness, design, games, video capabilities, location services, iPods, iPod Touch (which doubles the market size).

No one has as complete an ecosystem as Apple.

Just the iPhone plus iPod Touch is a double whammy that others cannot compete against.

Everyone else is selling an incomplete solution or lifestyle. Why choose this, when you can have everything with Apple?

For years, companies have competed with the iPod, but have failed to knock it down.

The iPhone will have similar success.

There is no company that has an ecosystem that Apple has. Therefore, they automatically lose.

Now that the iPhone 3G is only $99, other companies are getting squeezed at the low end as well. Thus even they can’t compete on price.

Apple has taken away any weapon that can be used against it by other companies.

Apple has simply been the BEST competitive company seen in the world.

Apple loves competition, by the way. There is space for everyone. Apple does not seek to destroy competition like Microsoft has tried to. Apple invites competition.

Apple’s lifeblood is just to build the best product it can. This is difficult for other companies who don’t have this passion to do. And no company currently exists in the Cell Phone market that has the skills and talent to make a better product than Apple.

There are indeed various strata of awareness levels in the society. The legion office drone lemmings make up one rather profound stratum of mediocrity, many of them barely able to operate any sort of computer, depending for the most part on ineptly memorizing a half dozen routines for handling their computer traffic. These couldn’t care less about Apple’s “aesthetics” or “quality.”

These same people also use cell phones and smart phones, the main criterion of choice being price or “free.”

I’ve had to deal with a dozen or so of these tinker toy predecessors to the iPhone over the past decade and a half, struggling with primitive phone OS’s and stupid and awkward user interfaces. The saving grace of these gadgets was of course their portability.

Then, enter the iPhone. Not just another cell phone. Not just another smart phone. It just wasn’t fair, was it.

How dare anyone upset that huge complacent apple cart of a phone industry!!

Talk about not fair, though. It wasn’t just a “blow” to the vested interests. It was a veritable “kill shot” like Bruce Willis, “The Last Boy Scout”, delivered to that bad guy who messed with him by the pool, shoving the guy’s nose into his brain.

How could anyone answer Apple’s formidable iPhone coup? If there’s any answer at all, it’s not likely to appear for years to come, and then only after Apple somehow goes psycho and self-destructs. But from all signs visible today, that’s highly unlikely, too.

In the mean time, the Apple stratum is rejoicing and relishing in Apple’s success and in the daily pleasures of iPhone ownership and usage.