Silly list of Five things missing from iPhone 3GS. Let’s see. Besides no Mass Storage Connectivity (see App Store, sweetie), Broader Data Handling (uh, Notes syncs, you know?), iTunes folders (sure, and why doesn’t it open a wine bottle?), Better Web Integration (why doesn’t my iPhone sync with Google, Outlook, Yahoo, my Mac, and the Library of Congress?), Better Camera (more megapixels isn’t the answer, dear), what’s missing? Melissa J. Perenson:

That’s not to say that the iPhone 3GS isn’t good. In fact, this new model is among the best handsets on the market today. Still, the 3GS’s combination of hardware and software continues to miss the mark in a few critical areas, and these deficiencies prevent the iPhone from leaping far ahead the competition.

I have a hard time determining how the list of five are “critical areas.” Is there any cell phone anywhere that does all the iPhone does now?

Microsoft’s Bing search engine is proving to be a competitor to Google. Or, is it? Bing gained a point in July while Google dropped a point in US search engine market share. The graph on ArsTechnica reveals the two month trend, June through July:

StatCounter says that Bing climbed to 9.41 percent of the search market last month, compared to 8.23 percent in June. Combined with Yahoo’s current share of the market (10.95 percent), the two come out with 20.36 percent—still a distant second to Google’s 77.54 percent, but a relatively large slice of the pie nonetheless.

Either way, that’s not much of a change.

Microsoft apologist John Boudreau on Apple’s WWDC:

Don’t expect a new iPhone.

Wait. It gets better. Microsoft puppet Rob Enderle on new iPhones at WWDC:

It appears the answer is no since they are signaling that not only will Jobs not be there, neither will the new phones.

Wait. There’s more. Dial-a-quote Tim Bajarin of Creative Strategies on a new iPhone or any new Apple hardware:

If people are expecting new hardware, there will be a letdown.

Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster on new hardware between the iPhone and MacBook line:

Such a product would fill the existing gap in Apple’s product line between the iPod touch and the MacBook.

Of course, the MacBook line has nearly disappeared, being moved into the MacBook Pro line, a new iPhone was introduced, and OS X Snow Leopard gets priced at a mere $29.

Finally, Needham & Company’s Charlie Wolf:

WWDC would be the ideal venue for launching (a new iPhone) because it probably has new features that developers can exploit.

Amazingly, that makes perfect sense. I hope he gets paid more than the other guys.

Walt Mossberg of WSJ gives a mini-review of Mac OS X Snow Leopard and leaves a little tip for Tiger users.

For owners of Intel-based Macs who are still using the older Tiger version of the Mac OS, Apple is officially making Snow Leopard available only in a “boxed set” that includes other software and costs $169. The reasoning is that these folks never paid the $129 back in 2007 to upgrade to Leopard. But here’s a tip: Apple concedes that the $29 Snow Leopard upgrade will work properly on these Tiger-equipped Macs, so you can save the extra $140.

That’s a nice treat. Thank you, Apple.

Remember Axiotron? They build and sell a modification to the MacBook which makes it a tablet. Axiotron filed for a trademark for the term TabletMac. From MacRumors:

Sometime in the past year, however, the trademark was transferred from Axiotron to Apple, and Apple is now listed as the owner of the trademark.

That merely adds speculative fuel to the flame (carried by all of us who believe Apple will market a tablet, slate, pad computer).