Ok....
Point taken, but how much of their "choice" is really just an illusion when they're still:
1. Buying a phone that's locked to one carrier for a 2 year period, *or* paying hundreds more just so they can still use the same hardware with the same people, paying the same monthly rate, except without the promise they'll keep service with them for that long?
2. Limited by what the carrier allows them to do with the phone on their network. (EG. Verizon's notorious crippling of Bluetooth sync capabilities of their phones, to ensure you can't do things that cost them potential revenue, like making your own ring-tones and downloading them to phones, or backing up your contact lists and calendars without using software they sell you first, or??)
3. Still unable to just pick up the phone and TALK on it whenever they like, just like a home phone, without worry about running over on minutes.
I guess my point is, all of these new cellphones coming out make huge promises of "freedom" to do this or that, and are hyped up to be "game changers" -- but I don't see much changing. There's no universally supported cellphone programming language, so a developer can't "write once, and run everywhere". (I guess companies tried to make Java the quick and dirty solution for a while there ... with phones like the Moto Razr and most Nextel's using it. But as we all know, Java has too many limitations to be the total solution for full-featured smartphones.) Unless that changes, I don't see Apple's "walled garden" approach to iPhone apps as that big a deal, really. The big issues have more to do with carrier restrictions and policies, and nobody has been able to break us free of that mess here in the USA.
Point taken, but how much of their "choice" is really just an illusion when they're still:
1. Buying a phone that's locked to one carrier for a 2 year period, *or* paying hundreds more just so they can still use the same hardware with the same people, paying the same monthly rate, except without the promise they'll keep service with them for that long?
2. Limited by what the carrier allows them to do with the phone on their network. (EG. Verizon's notorious crippling of Bluetooth sync capabilities of their phones, to ensure you can't do things that cost them potential revenue, like making your own ring-tones and downloading them to phones, or backing up your contact lists and calendars without using software they sell you first, or??)
3. Still unable to just pick up the phone and TALK on it whenever they like, just like a home phone, without worry about running over on minutes.
I guess my point is, all of these new cellphones coming out make huge promises of "freedom" to do this or that, and are hyped up to be "game changers" -- but I don't see much changing. There's no universally supported cellphone programming language, so a developer can't "write once, and run everywhere". (I guess companies tried to make Java the quick and dirty solution for a while there ... with phones like the Moto Razr and most Nextel's using it. But as we all know, Java has too many limitations to be the total solution for full-featured smartphones.) Unless that changes, I don't see Apple's "walled garden" approach to iPhone apps as that big a deal, really. The big issues have more to do with carrier restrictions and policies, and nobody has been able to break us free of that mess here in the USA.
