I don’t know…I thought the new iPhone GUI was neat along with the rest of the world, but is this necessary?

(photo from therawfeed.com)

Apparently, someone went through the trouble of hacking together a Windows Mobile skin package to simulate an iPhone interface, bringing Apple legal down with a ton of bricks:

It has come to our attention that you have posted a screenshot of Apple’s new iPhone and links that facilitate the installation of that screenshot on a PocketPC device.

Ya think?

Apple is launching what they hope will be the industry’s next revolution and they are going to aggressively and yes, irrationally sometimes, protect every pixel with everything they’ve got.

But this post isn’t about Apple’s lawyers…I’m talking to my fellow Windows Mobile users…why? I’ve looked at what’s left of the page which has the details on how to do this (after Apple’s lawyers got through with it) and it’s not a simple install-and-go thing. It involves multiple apps and tinkering just to get far away from an iPhone’s actual interface, but still close as anyone’s going to get before June. Why is this something you want to do to your phone? Do you realize how silly you are going to look taking out your little brick with a hacked-up iPhone skin on the screen? We’re already two strikes down for using a device that runs an “evil” OS. Trust me, no one sitting next to you on the train is going to say, “oh, is that the new iPhone? How cool are you!” They’re going to think, “Oh, now that’s pathetic.” You won’t have the transition effects, you won’t have WebKit, you won’t have visual voicemail, you won’t have that neat pincher effect to scale items. So in short, you won’t have anything that makes an iPhone, well an iPhone, besides your bright little icons on a black background. You’ll just have a “I have an active fantasy life” little imitation of it. Why??? I don’t get it.

For whatever reason you’ve selected a Windows Mobile device as your PDA/phone. Find something to love about it. Stop fighting it and appreciate it for what it does. Make it your own. Maybe it’s me. I never understood why folks would redo their Windows desktops to look and act exactly like OS X, either. If you want a Mac, get a Mac. If you hate the Windows XP theme, then replace it with something original-looking that you like…not a sad copy of something you wish you had.

I’m not talking about the skins/themes that have an OS X “feel” to them, like this one. Yes…it has some elements of OS X in it but no one will mistake it for anything other than a PocketPC. I’m only talking about those skins/themes that try so hard to be a near exact copy.