Technology journalism has become grabber headlines with no substance. The Register is one of the worst, now with a list of alleged iPhone killers.

While iPhone mania shows no sign of dissipating among the faithful, another big difference between the original iPhone and the latest version is that there are now a lot of very credible alternatives out there, all with touchscreens, fancy new interfaces, HSDPA 3G, Wi-Fi, A-GPS and the ability to expand and improve with downloadable apps.

The problem with this multi-page, hit whoring, ad generating article is that feature comparisons are mostly hardware, while applications, utilities, games—those things we actually use on our smart phones—get little mention, though that’s exactly where the iPhone excels.

Depending on where you read it, the headline might be, “Apple falls in customer satisfaction.” That’s true. Also true is this one, “Apple trounces Dell and PC makers in customer satisfaction.” From Fortune:

Apple’s score actually dropped this year — from 85 to 84 on a scale of 100 — even as overall user satisfaction with personal computers rose a point to 75 after two straight years of decline.

Compaq, HP and Acer/Gateway finished at 74. Dell was tops among PC brands at 75. Apple was 84, far and away the leader. The Mac maker was actually rated below Dell from 1997 to 2004.

Verizon’s empire strikes back with a delicious point-by-point anti-iPhone list, most of which won’t and don’t matter to the over 40-million iPhone users. From Fake Steve:

If the only way you can market your product is to compare it to some other product, you’ve already lost.

Is it a wise idea to insult tens of millions of happy, satisfied users about their choice in a phone they so obviously love?

The Touch Book is a real netbook with a detachable touch screen, smaller keyboard, small price tag, but generally a miniature notebook. It comes with Touch Book OS, but claims to run Ubuntu, Android, and Windows CE.

The CPU is an ARM chip from Texas Instruments, the OMAP3530, running with 256MB RAM and 256MB of NAND memory. There is no hard drive — instead you get an 8GB SD card. You’ll also find Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a 3D accelerometer and three USB ports. The display is held in place by magnets.

Price? $300 for the tablet screen, or $400 with the attachable keyboard. Would you buy a similar sized multi-touch Mac with an attachable screen that runs Mac OS X and iPhone OS? What would you pay?

TidBITS reports that Apple does not support Leopard’s Time Machine backups with USB hard drives attached to an Airport Extreme Base Station.

What a “lack of support” means is that if you attempt to use an 802.11n AirPort Extreme Base Station for Time Machine backup, you won’t get any help from Apple’s technical support…

That means it may work, it may not, but if it does work then doesn’t work then Apple won’t help you make it work again.