It seems a lot of Apple junkies want to try to justify the failures of "their" platform (as if no one had anything better to do than be an apologist for what is

It seems a lot of Apple junkies want to try to justify the failures of "their" platform (as if no one had anything better to do than be an apologist for what is, in the end, another computer manufacturer) by saying that the rest of the stuff that's not being complained about works nicely. That seems to me like an extremely weak point. Computers may be mostly about appliance functionality but the real value of one lies in its customizable parts, and some things are not, in the opinion of a lot of people, negotiable. Take iTunes. There was absolutely nothing that prevented Apple from implementing USB syncing, which practically every other music player has gotten right and there's no way in which anyone would claim it's Apple's fault if it doesn't work with a player. I don't see how that dilutes Apple's ability to control its own environment. Oh wait, that means I wouldn't need a crappy iPod and I could instead manage with any one of thousands of USB mass media-based players. Which goes back to the iPod. Wow, was that an inferior product. Apple did not make a single iPod that was actually a superior player on technical terms until 2004. Before that a huge number of players from iRiver, Cowon, and many other smaller players swept the iPod in terms of capability. Hell, my old iRiver iHP-120 is the only portable DAP I know of that had a digital audio output, and until the appearance of the iPod Shuffle no other Apple player came anywhere close in terms of sound quality. It's not even about the fact that there are better choices of music players; it's about the fact that a vendor is precluding me from using a component of my own because their proprietary implementation competes with it, even if I might not think that badly of Macs, and it costs them absolutely nothing on their part (save trying to strongarm me into buying their DAP). By the same token one of the things many people want a phone with the power of an iPhone is to have a replacement to lugging a portable computer. That demands an open platform, and as we have seen, Apple has no intention of letting that happen. What really surprises me here is the fanboys who can clearly hold the doublethink that is believing Apple control is better when they have shown they have no problem with inhibiting users from getting better software than what they have (Opera, Google Voice, Gutemberg Project, etc.). I guess Apple is a fine company if you're the sort of complacent, couch-potato consumer who does what he is told even if it's not for his benefit. Just keep shelling out cash and you can keep buying into the illusion that you're part of the computer users who "think different".