the iphone will not be your new mobile computer
“We define everything that is on the phone,” he said. “You don’t want your phone to be like a PC. The last thing you want is to have loaded three apps on your phone and then you go to make a call and it doesn’t work anymore. These are more like iPods than they are like computers.”
I understand what Apple's after here - a mobile environment is a whole lot less palatable when it's got crashes and glitches like the desktop and laptop world. But, I have been known to run Linux on my iPod, so I like to crack the closed shell on devices that go in my pockets. Hopefully the iPhone's lockdown is more of a "keep out" sign, rather than a sealed vault.
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Of course there are hardware manufacturers that build smartphones which are interested in an open platform and a software eco-system. Like the greenphone (trolltech) or the FIC Neo 1973, which I am personally more excited about, because all of the phones software will be opensourced (and the first gen has a more affordable price, too). Iin fact the software of the phone is more like a platform (openmoko) that will in the long term hopefully run on all kinds of hardware, and it decidedly different than all the other platforms, because it is not restricted to a sandbox, but allows access to all the software and hardware.
I haven't heard of a major crisis being caused by user-installed software on (1) Symbian phones, (2) Palm phones, (3) Java phones, (4) Windows phones. A smartphone is supposed to be a productivity device, unlike an iPod.