The reason it’s important that the Pre succeeds is so the mobile market doesn’t wind up like the desktop market — with just one single great experience, alone in a sea of crap.

This is where I differ with Gruber: Windows is the problem with the desktop computer market. That pile of shite rode on its brother’s coattails (remember DOS?) which itself was an artifact of IBM’s perceived power in the early 80’s. The desktop computer market (increasingly the laptop computer market now of course) is a fluke, not the general rule. C.f. pundit predictions for the iPod and iPhone — always based on the Mac v PC experience — and the startlingly different reality.

There used to be a wealth of ingenuity and innovation on the desktop too. The Amiga and Atari ST come to mind, and of course Acorn’s Archimedes. These platforms were all destroyed by the industry’s drive to “interoperability”, or strict conformity as that meant back then. Usability be damned! The Macintosh was almost killed too, surviving only thanks to the publishing niche it had fostered. If Commodore, Acorn and Atari could have lasted until the web — not Windows — became the global platform, how different would things be now? The PC story is a tragic comedy.

The Pre is a bit of a shameless rip off in some places, but at least it’s no Windows, Mobile or otherwise. Indeed, it has a promising alternate model for how many tasks are accomplished. I wish it the moderate best too, because Palm have one hell of a hill to climb, coming to the iPhone party a full two years and a billion downloads late. But the Pre is not the sole guardian between the smartphone market and the reeking cesspit which is the world of Vista. There’s no IBM to fuck this one up, no matter Microsoft’s prayers.