As you may have heard, The Guardian has created an iPhone app. It’s very good. But is it as good as ink printed on dead trees?

One of the side-effects of the current cold snap is that my papers aren’t delivered until fairly late in the day, if at all. I’m a creature of habit, so that buggers up my day quite considerably: the natural order of things is coffee, paper, toast, work. Hurrah, then, for the Guardian iPhone app.

Well, not quite. As an app it’s brilliant. As a newspaper replacement, it isn’t.

The single most important problem isn’t the app’s fault, but the iPhone’s. Reading from a screen isn’t fun, especially when you’re up too early and it’s still pitch black outside. No matter how much you tweak it, reading from a brightly lit screen simply isn’t as easy on the eyes as reading from paper.

The second problem is also the iPhone’s fault: the screen’s too small. Maybe it’s just me and my RSI, but holding the phone in one position for any period of time starts to hurt my hands, and because it’s such a small screen you spend more time scrolling than you do reading. I know it’s possible to read entire books on the iPhone, but I think anybody who does is nuts.

The third problem is that there’s a lack of serendipity. Again, this may just be me, but I find I tend to read much more of a printed paper or magazine than I do with a screen-based one. In print I’ll read most things; on a screen I only tend to click on the things I know I’m interested in.

Maybe things will change with the forthcoming Apple Tablet That Will Do Everything Including Raising Elvis From The Dead, or with e-ink based ebook readers (although I’m not convinced they have a long term future) – or more likely, maybe we’ll see new kinds of publication with embedded video and other goodies. But for those of us who need a daily print fix, I’m not sure technology has a decent alternative just yet.

Me, at Techradar:

Here’s how it works right now. Firm A makes an ebook reader and it’s the best ebook reader ever made – but the reviewers and the pundits and the potential purchasers all make frowny faces and say “That’s all very well, firm A, but just you wait until the Apple tablet huffs and puffs and blows your house down!”

Firm B makes an extraordinary HD netbook, and everybody says “Wow, that’s fantastic! But the Apple Tablet will deliver better battery life and also cut off your tails with a carving knife!”

Firm C makes a super-smart multimedia tablet that delivers astonishing sound quality, makes your penis bigger and cures cancer. “That’s great!” the world says. “But the Apple Tablet will bring your ancestors back from the dead, and grind your bones to make Steve Jobs’s bread!”

Have you seen the BMW-designed Mesh PC? It mings.

And then there are the Ferraris – the Acer Ferraris, that is. “Technology and innovation are driving forces behind man’s greatest achievements,” the blurb says.

“They are the foundations of past victories and the essences of future successes,” it continues. “Look, we’ve made a red laptop with a picture of a horse on it!” it really ought to add.

A fun wee piece I wrote for PC Plus has ventured online:

Back in the good old days, Microsoft did desktops, Google stuck to search and Apple made toys for people in polo necks. No more.

The superpowers of the technology world are at war, and like real wars, the battle is happening on several fronts. They’re fighting on the desktop, they’re fighting on mobile phones, they’re fighting in the browser and they’re fighting in your front room.

Who will prevail, and who will end up in a bunker?

Me, Techradar:

What they don’t seem to understand is that online privacy is like curtains: you don’t block the windows because you’re running a meth lab or a brothel in your house; you block them because you don’t want weirdoes peering through the window when you’re watching TV Burp.