From John Markoff’s iPhone article today:
“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.”
The iPhone, he insisted, would not look like the rest of the wireless industry.
“These are devices that need to work, and you can’t do that if you load any software on them,” he said. “That doesn’t mean there’s not going to be software to buy that you can load on them coming from us. It doesn’t mean we have to write it all, but it means it has to be more of a controlled environment.”
Actually what I want is a little handheld PC with a touch screen interface that I can use in whichever way that I choose. That would be fantastic. I realize that it’s not for every customer, but it would be the ideal phone for me. It’s a shame that Apple is locking down the iPhone. I may still buy one, but I’m wistful about what might have been.
Nick Carr does a good job of explaining how Steve Jobs’ inner control freak is what’s best and worst about Apple.