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 an

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.