Put yourself in Apple's shoes. They have to walk a very tight line of liability; getting bad press for "Shake the Baby" iPhone apps and being legally liable in places like Germany for any X-rated app on the phone, getting bad relationships with carriers for hogging bandwidth (let alone if there were bittorrent apps in the app store), trying to prevent people unlocking their phones and breaking the contract, trying to learn from Nokia's mistakes and prevent viruses from spreading through iPhones, and trying to prevent piracy of apps. Allowing ad-hoc distribution of apps is just begging for malware and viruses and spyware, like what Android is now feeling the pain and bad rep from.

Apple has come a long way from a "No apps allowed (but we'll turn a blind eye to jailbreaking)," to "almost all apps allowed, >95% approved, and we have codified rules and an appeals process." It's easy to whine about how Apple doesn't do what you want, but if you were in their shoes, what decision could you make that didn't worsen any of the problems up above?

Bear in mind that one big slipup and Apple will be relegated to forever third-place. If you opened the App Store to any app whatsoever, it will lead to massive user data theft because of the now-popular Farmvi11e and other trojan apps, Apple will be sued for millions of dollars and the brand will be tarnished. Allow unlimited background apps, and the battery life will plummet and people will blame Apple and your brand will be stained. If you make jailbreaking easier and piracy overflows on the iPhones, developers will leave the platform. Apple DOES understand the gripes and is working on it. You can provision your app for 100 devices, and distribute enterprise apps outside of the app store. Apple finally allowed background support where its needed and did some tricks to keep battery life good and the user experience nice.

Taken from #36396

Let's not play that game. Throughout history, Christians burned down mosques, Muslims destroyed mandirs, Hindus destroyed churches, Christians attack gurdwaras, Buddhists destroyed mosques, (all examples I can cite). The cycle continues.

Survey shows that 2/3 of those who oppose the Islamic center in lower Manhattan also hate Islam. So you "can" dislike something supported by some members of a group without being "anti" that group, but this is a bad example to prove that point.

If so, how is this iPhone's fault if RIM brags about outselling the blackberry

Wrist rocket? Are you Iron Man?

Apple removed the carriers' veto power over cell phone features. Verizon has disabled or crippled countless features on their phones. Apple made sure they had creative control over the device; no forced branding, no blocking of features, allowing the use of WiFi and some VoIP

It's not a problem with the iPhone's radio. The problem is that AT&T segregates iPhone data from the rest of the network and locks it at a certain percent of the network traffic. I suppose it's so that the data-hungry iPhone users don't make the network crawl for everyone, but the downside is that iPhone users get screwed with dropped calls etc.

Maybe you live in an echo chamber, but show me public opinion polls claiming support for legalizing Marijuana. If you're so confident, why don't you run for Congress on it, where you can bring it to the floor for a vote?

Fact is, it's a political death sentence. More people would likely oppose it than support it, despite the few rallies of college students. Any politician outside of california who openly supports it would get attacked immediately, and their opponent would be able to raise more money.

If you think Obama is going to make himself a one-term president by advocating for something Congress would never support, write him a letter telling him to stand up and try it. See what he thinks.

Yes but the updated Skype to allow this has not yet hit the App Store.

Mod parent up! This is better data than a magazine article

The flu shot is tested annually through peer-reviewed clinical trials. The shot is compared to its protective factor year over year. I believe the data shows it works.

Not quite the same everywhere.

Let's take google for example. I can export my google calendars in XML or iCal format. GMail is accessible via IMAP where I can pull all my messages off of it. Google reader has an API, so it would be pretty simple to pull the RSS feeds and the read/unread/shared/starred articles out. Pretty much the same with MobileMe.

Completely the opposite. Go look at Apple's developer pages and SDK, they provide clearcut access to their sync services. Anyone can write a program to interface with their iCal and address book databases, like BusySync and Spanning Sync. If you have a phone-like device you want to sync, Apple offers a plugin architecture called iSync, and if that isn't good enough for you, their SDK allows third party developers to step in, like The Missing Sync.

Does a developer not want to play by Apple's rules? Fine, Apple even offers its iTunes DB in XML format for other devices and applications to read, such as the iLife library that developers can tap into, and some have.

Palm decided to throw all of these out the window and circumvent the software with a bad hack. Apple does not want to be responsible for this hack, because Apple, and not Palm, will bear all the criticism if iTunes 9.1 breaks Pre compatibility, even though it's not Apple's fault. Apple basically left the front door open for Palm to sync its device through the proper channels, and Palm decides it really wants to enter using the window instead.

You've fallen into the availability heuristic, where you associate Islam with terrorists because you don't hear about the non-terrorist Muslims. South America and parts of Europe are crammed with terrorism, but nobody blames Christianity. Maybe culture is a cause, but not the religion, since most Muslims live in non-terrorism areas.