Poor Mojo's Two Minute Hate

Randall Stross opines in Sunday's NYT: The iPhone [is] gorgeous, feature-laden and pricey ... music-playing function will be limited by factory-installed “crippleware” ... [that term] balances the euphemistic names that the industry uses for copy protection. Apple officially calls its own standard “FairPlay,” but fair it is not.

Cory Doctorow is, predictably, happy to read that: ...Apple and Cingular have been trumpeting the technical prowess they've deployed in locking iPhone to the Cingular network, to be sure that no one can switch carriers with their iPhones. Even the Copyright Office has recognized that locking handsets to carriers is bad for competition and bad for the public. ... There's another thing you can't switch with the iPhone: the software it runs. You can't install third-party apps on handset. Steve Jobs claims that this is because running your own code on a phone could crash the phone network, which must be news to all those Treo owners running around on Cingular's own network without causing a telecoms meltdown.

Marc Hedlund is worried about the "No 3rd party apps" issue: It would be smarter for Apple to figure out how they can make others (and not just Cingular) successful on top of what they build, rather than trying to own and control everything. For me that strategy is a deal-breaker, and I think it should be for you, too.

Dave Winer adds: I've heard from people who were at the Jobs presentation this week that there was a wire connecting his cell phone to something. I can't tell you myself, because I am not allowed to attend Apple press events. If I were there, I would tell you.