LOL, I just knew the tech guys would miss the point, and I never dreamed they would so publicly admit (inadvertently) it so quickly. Oh, they think they were being clever by these responses, but they merely confirm Steve's point.
Yes, sure, if you are a geek, the definition of open expressed in code makes a good point. But Steve wasn't addressing geeks (something that drives MacRumors posters crazy), for whom every device is open (including the iPhone) by their definition of open (as in, can I crack this?)
But the 90% of the smartphone users who are not geeks, in other words the hundreds of millions who wouldn't know code if it kicked them in the butt, these geek responses are meaningless. Geeks all over the Net are laughing at Steve today, but everyone else (90%) understands just what Steve said.
Android might be geek open, but to everyone else it's fragmented by what the cell providers are doing to Android. It's de facto locked down by Verizon, so that the end user is stuck with whatever version Verizon wants them to have, along with all the cruft that Verizon foists upon them. This is not open. Steve's point remains, and the geeks can laugh all they want, but the hundreds of millions of non-geek users are getting tired of "open" that is closed to them by stupid cell providers.
