iPhone - A ball and chain for freedom

<rant>I just read this article iPhone Coders Miffed Muzzled By Apple s NDA - Webmonkey. Steve Jobs. You can kiss my ass. There is nothing insanely great about Apple, who uses BSD under the hood of their OS for God's sake, and then has draconian and stupid NDA's like the iPhone app developer one. I hope Linux phones bury your iPhone. You can believe me when I say that will never ever use an iPhone. In fact... I'm thinking of selling my iPod classic (not that it has ever been sullied by any DRM iTunes) now too.

What an assualt on our freedoms to have something so potentially cool also be so horribly corrupted by control and fear. If you think your product is best then put your access to it where your mouth is. Open everything up so that it can be freely enjoyed.  Apple frustrates me so much, because the potential is so great. But the constant over-control and fear that is clearly there behind almost every product is just maddening to me. 

I just wish that Apple could realize how much better they would be if their approach could have quality and freedom. Eventually the lack of freedom is going to impede the quality, and then eventually the value of their products. Frankly if their hardware wasn't so damn expensive I'd probably already own a Macbook.  They are just starting to really be competative in the PC and laptop markets. I wonder how much more so they could be if they losened their grip and became more open.

There are millions of people that would pay $100 to run OS X on their existing craptacular Vista PC. But will Apple allow it? No. Just the same, because of Apple's exclusive deal with AT&T and their draconian iPhone software policies and developer NDA, I think they are keeping millions of people from being Apple customers. Why? Is it because they believe that its the iTunes and iPhone software sales that are the real money makers here? I don't think opening things up more will hurt that. 

The sheep out there that will pay for the right (or lack thereof) to have DRM's music and software will still probably do that. Frankly if it is convenient and relatively cheap people will always pay for it. That revenue stream is always there. The sad thing is that there is nothing stopping people from selling open software either. The difference is that paying for the software will usually purchase you convenience and support, while handling things yourself for free may take more effort and you are on your own. 

Now Apple is willing to make some of its customers criminals in order for them to use the iPhone that way we should all be entitled to use it. They have to be cracked in order to be useful. That involves breaking your agreements with AT&T, Apple, and probably some DCMA crap too. 

I'll stick with my Zaurus and the Angstrom or Debian Linux distros on it for now thank you very much! </rant>

OK that felt good to get out of my system!