Yet, like with cars, there exists a sizable community of people who want to put on bigger wheels/tires, a new turbo, a new stereo system, taller suspension, etc. A locked bootloader is the same as having a hood that can only be opened with the dealer's key.
I don't know a single person that wants to look under their hood any more (though living in greater NYC area, I realize this is not representative of most communities). When I was in high school (mid 80s), everyone did. But even the grease monkeys aren't interested any more.
It's kind of like late 80's ricers versus today's German cars. I myself auto-crossed a Honda CRXsi. Today I'm just as into performance, but have other things to do with my time. I can honestly say I have not ever seen the engine of my car which Car & Driver recently named the Best Handling Car in America. It's a Boxster, and ... there is no hood to open. I'm okay with that.
That "sizable community" is dwindling fast, as computing becomes an appliance technology. Your opinion is disproportionately represented here because HN is much more like the late night parking lot full of ricers in San Bernardino than it's like an arbitrary quarter mile of LA's I-10 rush hour traffic.
// Note: iphone-dev's redsn0w[1] has an untethered jailbreak for iOS 5.0.1 on everything but the iPhone 4s and iPad 2. And saurik's Cydia[2] is doing just fine, with plenty of souped up suspensions or new stereo systems if you want to get your hands dirty.
Yes, in downstate New York, you might not find people with modified cars. You might find people with no cars. Upstate NY is a much different environment though. Outside of the largest city in the nation, you'll find modified cars everywhere, from new rims on a city-cruiser to jacked up mud bogging trucks.
Or lets put it this way: you buy a car that can only be worked on by the dealer and only runs on their proprietary fuel, even though your local mechanic/Speedway could do it much cheaper and much faster if it weren't for the locked hood. Brand new cars are getting notoriously harder and more expensive to maintain because of proprietary electronics which require dealer intervention when they break.
Your "note" is like saying "Yeah but I got around it by using a crowbar. Now I have to buy gas from some guy in his basement because Toyota would sue me if went to the dealership."
Which, until HTC's note today, was the same crowbar needed for HTC Android phones sold under carrier contracts. The dealership (BestBuy, Verizon store, whatever) isn't going to unlock your phone's boot loader whether it's iOS or Android.
But since you want to further torture this analogy:
Changing your tires and rims and paint job is like changing your case or wallpaper. Jack up suspension, get an Otter Defender. Changing your OEM stereo is like changing your OEM headphones. Change the exhaust, change the ringtone. On the other hand, rooting your phone to void the warranty is like installing an aftermarket ECU to void the warranty.
While everyone "customizes" their cars and their phones, it's almost always superficial. Very few, even in upstate New York, want to void the warranty with aftermarket parts in the engine control electronics or drive train.
Before Fairfield County, CT, I lived in the Smokey Mountains between North Carolina, Georgia and Tennessee. I myself had a car on blocks. :-) And before that, for a decade, I lived in central Africa where trucks you couldn't swap parts on like something from Mad Max didn't last long. Point being, I'm familiar with the tradeoffs of DIY customization vs "just works" in a broad spectrum of cultures.
So I'll assure you, the kids in Africa now enabled to communicate through their Nokias and Ericssons and Huaweis[1] don't give a damn about "rooting" their phones, and neither do most Sunday mechanics in the Smokies. Does it send/receive SMS? Can it make calls? For the next generation, can it do email? Great. From Wall St to Kinshasa, people want everyday appliances to just do their jobs and not waste their time.
From Wall St to Kinshasa, people want everyday appliances to just do their jobs and not waste their time.
Why would those have to be mutually exclusive? I drive a Toyota 4Runner. Stock/unmodified it's a great daily driver, a safe family car, hauls a lot of stuff, and is great in the winter. But I like to go fishing, and where I fish is not always easily accessible with what Toyota has given me. Luckily, there is a healthy aftermarket that gives me the freedom to jack up the suspension, add a locking rear differential, and install bigger tires (which are not just for looks).
Or I can buy an HTC HD2 which comes stock with Windows Mobile 6.5 (which does well enough on its own, all WM6 jokes aside it still works as a phone), but thanks to HTC's unlocked bootloader and a healthy aftermarket community, I could also install Android, MeeGo, Ubuntu, and Windows Phone 7. There's no reason why "moddable" and "functional" have to be exclusive categories. Actually a nice thing about WebOS devices is that they are almost completely unbrickable. If you mess up, HP gives you directions on how to boot from USB to reinstall everything. No reason why every other phone can't have that ability, too, to avoid warranty claims.
