Some Storm owners have complained about everything from clunky software for typing on the touch screen to the device's sluggish performance with basic tasks like dialing-by-voice or taking photographs.

"I found myself wanting to throw it in the ocean due to my frustration with its overall usability," said Steven Golub, a longtime Verizon customer from Morristown, N.J., who bought the Storm the day it was released, but returned it a few weeks later.

Despite selling 500,000 units in its first month of release, it shipped with an operating system that held together less like a mature operating system and more like an unstable element created in an atom smasher, existing for a mere microsecond before detonating into an atomic explosion. RIM released patches, but the damage was done, and the Storm's sales have plummeted... it is now very definitely known amongst most consumers as an iPhone also ran.

Verizon and RIM, determined to release the Storm in time for the holidays, rushed the device to market despite glitches in the stability of the phone's operating system, according to people close to the launch.

RIM co-Chief Executive Jim Balsillie said the companies made the crucial Black Friday deadline "by the skin of their teeth," after missing a planned October debut. Mr. Balsillie said such scrambles -- and the subsequent software glitches that need to be fixed -- are part of the "new reality" of making complex cellphones in large volumes.

Sorry, Jim, but that dog don't hunt. This is only the "new reality" of capitalist incompetence and greed, which is the same as the old reality. There's a perfectly viable secondary strategy available, which both Apple and Palm have followed with success: work in secret on a phone and an operating system that are excellent in and of themselves, without being compared to the competition. Design them both together; the limbic system to the body. Then work on them while they are done, and then release when you're damn sure you got it right. The world needs less Blackberry Storms and more Pres.

I'm inclined to think the geeks among us want the buggy first edition, the rest of us want the sleek consumer edition.