Jailbreaking hassle? It takes about 2 minutes, and you can buy pre-jailbroken iphones on the high street (my favourite around here is a CPW store advertising the iphone on one side, and nearby a shop selling jailbroken sim-free ones with an equally large advert :p).

The problem is it doesn't 'just work' - there are some things that need 3rd party software to fix - the ability to delete SMS messages for example (no idea what was going through steve's head when he decided to miss that one out).

What are you talking about? There are no upgrade issues. And the major reason I use Apple stuff is because it's technically superior. A jailbroken iPhone is better than anything else you can get right now. The jailbroken iPhone experience is nothing like the Hackintosh experience.

"Apple will have to include MSN Messenger/Live support if it wants to make the iPhone a viable consumer smartphone outside the US where MSN Messenger is king."

You sure about that? Apple will 'have' to include it?

Why can't they just let Microsoft handle that?

@ Tony,
Yeah, it's a hassle for most people to search for jailbreaking, doing it and then have to wait for jailbroken updates before updating their device. Not everyone is technical or wants to deal with it. Every now and then you need to look at the world through other people's point of view.

@ mattyohe,
They could, but the SDK rules for a 3rd-party app means that it can't run in the background. That means as soon as you exit the MSN Messneger app to take a call, start a new music playlist, check a website, etc, you are no longer connected to the MSN network.

An Apple app would all for one app to run all the popular IM types. I suspect that Apple may even put this into SMS, as the interface is the same. The only difference would be whether it's sent ot a phone number or username, and the iPhone SMS/IM client can easily handle that without any trouble.

@ Bender

"They could, but the SDK rules for a 3rd-party app means that it can't run in the background."

Sure, unless you are a company that has strong ties to Apple. Don't be surprised if some apps from specific companies are allowed some background processing abilities.

Especially with the recent background hooks that have been found in the latest beta.

I hope that they DON'T include the other networks and just include jabber. People need to wake up and realize that walled garden IM is as silly as walled garden email was in it's early days. Maybe only including jabber on such a popular consumer device could help facilitate that push to open networks.

That would be XMPP, aka Jabber.

So yes.