I couldn't agree with you more and Apple knows that they're finally in for heavy weight bout too. I find it way too coincidental that they're finally addressing some of our issues at the same time the Storm is to be released. NOW they want to give us a tethering option and allow Orb to stream video content? NOW they want to loosen up on their radical rejection policy for the app store. They're just readying themselves for the storm. I've already halted all purchases for the iphone (apps, case, etc.) as I'm strongly assuming that I'll make the change over. And for those that want to keep complaining about the Storm's screen (before ever using it) or posting your doubts about it.....Apple's implemeting it into their notebooks - I bet you'll love it then.
Without getting into too much detail - I have a friend who works in the R&D dept for RIM that was involved with Storm project and he's been testing/using it from it's first days out of the factory. Needless to say, being in the industry, he has a BB and an iphone (probably a few), as well as a slew of other phones, and he said that it's even exceeding his expectations. RIM really put the iphone up on the chopping block with this phone, broke it down, analyzed all it's shortcommings, listened to the public's feedback (something Apple doesn't know how to do) and designed a device to take down the Goliath (or at least as best as they could under Verizon's constraints). Now I don't think anything will ever really "kill" the iphone, simply because they've marketed themselves too well and its fanbase is just too large and fanatic, but Apple will definitely be woken up with some cold water on the 21st. RIM's repeatedly proven that they know how to accomplish what they set out for and rise above, this phone's no different. They didn't invest the ammount money that they did simply to give their current fanbase a new phone...if they fail to capture a nice portion of the iphone's audience they'll see this project as a failure, and they're not known to fail.
