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To start with, the free case is a very recent concession that was made in response to intense media pressure (whether deserved or not). Moreover, I didn't say t

To start with, the free case is a very recent concession that was made in response to intense media pressure (whether deserved or not). Moreover, I didn't say that the antenna problem is a critical problem for all users, but I said it illustrates why for all users, it's a sucker deal. You are betting against Apple ever deciding that its one sanctioned upgrade path should go in a direction you don't like. You are gambling not that Apple will suddenly be unable to make good products, but that their design decisions will be different from your needs and desires. Moreover, there is likely a lot more investment in the platform than just $50 of apps. As for "easily the best device on the market," that's only true if you are completely fine with a device that does only and exactly what Apple allows it to do, rather than a device that is, as computers throughout their entire history as successful consumer devices have been, designed to allow you to do what you want-- including create and innovate. Compare the approach of Google's App Inventor to the approach of Apple's monolithic and cryptographically signed dev chain, for one specific example of what I mean.

glhaynes 16y ago
I understand what you're saying, but the vast majority of people who have iPhones (and the people who Apple is explicitly targeting with their product design and marketing), are completely fine with a device that "does only and exactly what Apple allows it to do". So to say that "for all users it's a sucker's deal" is to ignore these millions and millions of people while making a statement about yourself and your tastes and desires. For you, apparently the iPhone's tradeoffs are unacceptable, and that's fine. I'm sympathetic with what you're saying: in theory, it sounds obvious that an open ecosystem where every device manufacturer can create whatever they want is going to lead to better hardware than Apple could ever compete with. In reality, that just could not be farther from the truth for a huge group of people: there's not another phone I like better than the iPhone 4, so I'm "stuck" with Apple — not because they have me locked in but because nobody else seems to make a phone whose particular tradeoffs are more in line with what I desire.

glhaynes 16y ago

I understand what you're saying, but the vast majority of people who have iPhones (and the people who Apple is explicitly targeting with their product design and marketing), are completely fine with a device that "does only and exactly what Apple allows it to do". So to say that "for all users it's a sucker's deal" is to ignore these millions and millions of people while making a statement about yourself and your tastes and desires. For you, apparently the iPhone's tradeoffs are unacceptable, and that's fine. I'm sympathetic with what you're saying: in theory, it sounds obvious that an open ecosystem where every device manufacturer can create whatever they want is going to lead to better hardware than Apple could ever compete with. In reality, that just could not be farther from the truth for a huge group of people: there's not another phone I like better than the iPhone 4, so I'm "stuck" with Apple — not because they have me locked in but because nobody else seems to make a phone whose particular tradeoffs are more in line with what I desire.