Apple creates brilliant user interfaces.

Macs are much cooler than Windows PCs. If OS/X is a Lexus, Windows is a Chevy Lumina. (Linux on the desktop, is, by extension, an AMC Pacer.)

The iPhone is so cool most people think it does something my Treo doesn’t, although they aren’t sure exactly what. So why can’t it cut and paste?

But this isn’t a column about user interfaces. I’m not really sure what it is about. Let’s keep going.

Maybe it’s about technology. We just mentioned the ultimate in cool. Now let’s look at something very hot: Software as a Service (SaaS).

SaaS is hot. I can’t get over the nagging feeling that it’s hot only because the IT trade press acts more like a bunch of cheerleaders who can’t dance very well than like journalistic enterprises.

Dale Vile of Freeform Dynamics, writing in The Register — one of the few exceptions to this complaint — points out how poorly SaaS has been accepted in real-world (as opposed to press-released) enterprises. Other than SalesForce.com, where is it? (See “Rewriting the SaaS laws,” for more).

eWeek is more optimistic (“10 Things You Should Know about SaaS,” no byline, Gartner, AMR Research and Forrester cited as sources). Interestingly, while it says only 20% of all SaaS implementations are CRM (read SalesForce.com), everything else in its report is about SalesForce.com. I wonder why.

No, actually I don’t.

As Vile points out, SaaS is an excellent choice for narrowly focused solutions that don’t require a high transaction volume, tailored configuration, or significant integration with other systems.

Situations, in other words, that are also solved easily with shrink-wrapped software.

Deep down I know SalesForce.com must provide something important to the enterprise that it couldn’t get with Act! or Goldmine. I just don’t know what, other than redirecting service desk calls from those annoyingly demanding salespeople to an outside vendor.

Huh. That can’t have been the topic either. I don’t have anything else to say about SaaS that I haven’t said before (“Trend, fad, or blah blah blah?” Keep the Joint Running, 2/13/2006). Let’s try a former hot trend: Internet telephone services.

A couple of years ago, before the patent infringement suits, Vonage and Skype were hot.

(Definitely not the point, but a thought I feel like sharing: I’m going to apply for a business methods patent. The business method is applying for patents on obvious and pre-existing ideas, then filing hundreds of nuisance suits to become rich for no apparent reason. With the patent I’ll sue anyone who files nuisance suits based on stupidly awarded patents.)

Where was I? Internet telephone services. Hot or not, they are interesting. Not for their technology, but for taking de-verticalization to the consumer sector.

Once upon a time, telecommunications was completely verticalized. AT&T wasn’t just a monopoly. It was a seven-layer monopoly. It owned the entire protocol stack, from the physical layer (the wires) all the way to the application layer (telephony).

Then came Carterphone and MCI. They didn’t just break the monopoly. They also de-verticalized telecom. MCI provided only the network layer. Carterphone provided only the application layer. (Some companies — aggregators (also called “aggravators”) — service only the invoicing layer.)

Internet telephone services do for consumers what PBX vendors did for the business marketplace years ago. They separate the network from the telephony applications.

In doing so they have achieved something else that’s even more notable: They make it possible to buy telephone service from a retailer.

Which brings us to the point of this column (hey, it has one after all!) — a prediction: Vonage and its competitors represent the end of the line for the cellular networks. It will take a decade or more, but it will happen, because cellular providers aren’t retailers. They’re telecommunications companies.

Choose any cellular provider. Go to its website. Try to figure out what you’ll have to spend. Look at your cellular bill. Try to figure out if it’s right.

Now go to any of the Internet telephone company websites and figure out what you’ll spend and what you’ll get for it. Something miraculous will happen — you’ll find you can. The Internet telephone companies think like retailers.

We’ll still have to wait a decade or more because we won’t have a ubiquitious WiFi mesh until then. The rule is old but it’s still valid: Innovation is fast, but infrastructure is slow.

Once we do have ubiquitous WiFi, we’ll be able to take our WiFi Internet telephones with us. Then we’ll use them instead of our cell phones to become distracted while driving so we can crash our AMC Pacers into a tree without noticing.

Much better.