>That is entirely true, and yes that is part of the problem. The polished nature of a proprietary operating system is like a polished jail. It may be nice and roomy now, but what about in 5 or 10 years when everyone has an iPhone and Apple has one or no competitors? Can we stop them from shrinking our room if there is no free alternative?
Well, for one our room was fairly small itself before the iPhone. Actually, not small --inexistent. The only reason the touch-smartphone room exists is because Apple made the iPhone and then everybody copied it. So, if they have no competitor in 10 years, more power to them.
But I think that that can't happen. Even MS at the height of its power has had competitors... And today we have Android in several versions already.
> Actually, no. You can access the filesystem, but you can't install your own free (or proprietary) operating system on the iPhone because there isn't one.
Why that is? Because the OSF/GNU etc never cared about a mobile OS until Apple made one. Suddenly freedom in the mobile apps was important. Why wasn't it important when Nokia, Sony, Ericsson et al ruled? Because it took Apple (and Google after that) to show that a mobile OS can be a nice platform to use.
> the OSF/GNU etc never cared about a mobile OS until Apple made one. Suddenly freedom in the mobile apps was important. Why wasn't it important when Nokia, Sony, Ericsson et al ruled?
Well, for one our room was fairly small itself before the iPhone. Actually, not small --inexistent. The only reason the touch-smartphone room exists is because Apple made the iPhone and then everybody copied it. So, if they have no competitor in 10 years, more power to them.
But I think that that can't happen. Even MS at the height of its power has had competitors... And today we have Android in several versions already.
> Actually, no. You can access the filesystem, but you can't install your own free (or proprietary) operating system on the iPhone because there isn't one.
Why that is? Because the OSF/GNU etc never cared about a mobile OS until Apple made one. Suddenly freedom in the mobile apps was important. Why wasn't it important when Nokia, Sony, Ericsson et al ruled? Because it took Apple (and Google after that) to show that a mobile OS can be a nice platform to use.