The bulk of the folks bitching in this thread seem to follow the same line of logic: Android does stuff that you can do without hacking your iPhone.

So? The parent makes the key point... when you jailbreak it, the iPhone is really magnificent. It's pretty slick to begin with, but when you open it up to non-restricted apps, it's starts to really shine. Great UI. Lots of flexibility. Everything Apple gives you combined with everything the dev-team groupies have to offer.

And yet you wine about having to "hack" it?

First off, the process of jailbreaking an iPhone is so trivial that "hack" hardly does the process justice. Perhaps it would be more appropriate to describe it as a non-Apple approved upgrade.

Second, are you hainging out on the right website? It used to be the Slashdot mantra that the easy way was less desirable. Isn't this the website where countless threads proselytizing the good of Linux over the evils of Windows glossed over the x windows settings you used to have to tweak in your console based text editor after having freshly compiled yourself a new kernel, all to get to a point where the mouse cursor would move across the desktop. And you complain now of the difficulty involved with a gui-based nearly brick-proof software hack?

Seriously?

If I had a mod up point, I'd give it to you. It takes me longer to relearn how to do things in Office 2007 that I was proficient at in Office 2003, than it does to learn something else (OO or iWork) from scratch.

It did indeed take me five minutes to figure out how to print.

And in Excel, why did they screw up the 'formula bar'? MS had in Excel, the one piece of the office bundle that none of the other packages had ever managed to get quite right, and then they had to muck it up.

I'm betting that Chrome would easily surpass Safari here on Slashdot if Google ever gets around to coming out with the Mac and Linux versions.

I think the parent makes two good points. Apple gains from this and people will indeed pay more to avoid Vista.

My anecdote:
I bought 3 new computers for the house last year. The desktop for myself was my chance to escape from dual-booting and run a purely Linux system. I'd been happy enough with Ubuntu finally to do it, and plus I could afford system two... the windows computer to appease my wife who had always complained bitterly (and still holds it against me) when I'd tried to get her to use Linux. Since I just got her a cheap system, it didn't have an XP option. I figured she'd be happy with the shiny Vista interface. Only I had to upgrade the store bought - pre installed with Vista system with more RAM in order to get it to function.

System 3 was a laptop that we would both use. After much debate, I managed to talk the Mrs into letting me get an Apple. She was very apprehensive, not being the sort that takes well to technology changes, so is what I consider to be an "average consumer". She didn't like the Mac at first, and to be honest, it took me a bit to figure out how to get the default settings fixed so that I could right-click.

Long story short, she's been exposed to all 4 OS's now. When her company got her a work laptop, she requested a Mac. Her IT shop refused to support Apples so she made them downgrade a Dell to XP from Vista. I'm betting the time it took their IT shop to reload OS and get it working (taking into account their 'competence') cost her company a good bit more than $150.

Even though she occasionally uses the Vista machine at home, she doesn't like it and she uses my MacBook Pro more. I anticipate that there will never be another Windows box in our house. Thank you, MS for giving us Vista.