I am no fan of Apple but I can admit that they make some nice hardware. Why do they think it will play out any different this time?

The last time, the Board forced Steve out of the company and Apple stopped creating dramatically new products, favoring incremental improvements instead.

They can't do that with computers, why would tablets be any different?

Fewer moving parts.

If the company wants to own my phone, they're welcome to buy me one... :)

I'm willing to bet that your company doesn't care so much about your phone so much as they do about their data.

More delicately, a photo studio might be the only kind of business that will overwhelmingly be an Apple shop, which explains the iPhone prevalence in that case.

Talk to me when it's an accounting firm or whatever.

How about a bank? Or maybe a food manufacturer? A law firm?

Take your pick.

If the rest of the world wants to pay the developers to build that software, I'm certain that many would jump at the chance. The fact is, people get something for free and then they bitch when it doesn't do everything they think it should do, because it's never been something important to the developers.

Tell me, when you're doing your hobby, say, gardening, what would you do if some random schmuck came up to you and said "I really like peas, and you aren't planting any, so you suck. You should plant peas."?

That would depend on whether or not I'm telling passers-by that they're schmucks for shopping for food at supermarkets instead of growing their own free food.

And you have assumed I am the only developer.

How many seats of Flash CS5 do you have to purchase before the per-seat cost falls below $600?

And you have assumed all of my developers are proficient with xcode/objective-c/mac os x.

And you're assuming that all of your developers are already proficient in Flash.

And you have assumed no other costs involved with purchasing new hardware.

This one is actually a valid point. There are indeed other costs, but a keyboard, mouse, and display do not increase costs significantly.

So I will now assume you have no clue about the business side of development (or business in general).

I know plenty about business. You want maximum dollars for minimum effort. Wanting that is fine. But the shit you and the rest of your buddies on elance develop is probably just that--LCD shit.

You must use apple, apple, and apple only. If you choose to use anything but apple, you cannot use apple. So in order to develop anything useful for apple, i MUST fork over more money to apple. What's wrong with this paragraph.

Nothing. You just don't like it. Too bad.

Your statistics are void because they are about smartphones and they were compiled before the ipad was released. Care to provide a different set of statistics to further prove my point?

Instead of trying to find a set of statistics you might like, how about you cherry pick the market you want and share your statistics with me?

The problem is that it's not illegal to develop or distribute tools which violate the DMCA. It's just illegal to actually use them.

I don't like the DMCA either, kid. But let's at least be honest about what it says.

It turns out that it is in fact illegal to "manufacture, import, offer to the public, provide, or otherwise traffic in any technology, product, service, device, component, or part thereof, that," among other things, "has only limited commercially significant purpose or use other than to circumvent a technological measure that effectively controls access to a work protected under this title." (17 U.S.C. 1201(a)(2)).

Nope! Not legal; requires violating the DMCA to get a jailbroken device.

Given Apple's recent history, if Apple thought what the iPhone Dev Team/Cydia is doing was illegal under the DMCA, they'd have acted by now.

You didn't get away with paraphrasing the encyclopedia in 5th grade.

Why did you think you'd get away with paraphrasing Gruber today?

A bigger question is whether Apple prevents other OSes from running. That might be an illegal extention of monopoly power.

What monopoly? Apple's not even the biggest player in the smartphone market, let alone a monopolist.

Or perhaps you're talking about the "devices that run iPhone OS" monopoly, in which case you're a retard.

As an independent developer I have to spend more money to develop for the iphone since I must use a Mac and I must use Snow Leopard. Adobe allowed me to skirt this requirement by using Flash, which has a significantly lower starting cost. Lower starting cost = entry to market = lower out of pocket funding for iphone development.

Flash CS5 is the only product that comes with the Flash-to-.ipa converter. It retails for $700. The Mac Mini starts at $600. Last I checked, $600 was less than $700.

They don't have the funds to start a legal fight, nor could they survive apple's change in terms of services. That, sir, is a monopoly. Apple has a monopoly on the market.

Let's get a couple of things straightened out:

1) Changing your terms of service does not give you a monopoly in your market.
2) Apple's US smartphone marketshare is 25%--18% less than RIM. How can you have a monopoly in your market if you're not even the largest player?

I'd ask for a refund on whatever it was you spent on your "education."

Apple wants to stomp developers who would build something out in a high-level environment/language, and then translate it to another language that is more appropriate for their target platform.

No, Apple wants to stomp third-party multi-platform SDKs that don't produce a good experience on any platform.

Jobs has obfuscated this with his letter because he's trying to hide some very nasty politics/business practices.

No obfuscation at all. He comes right out and says it. Thoughts on Flash:

We know from painful experience that letting a third party layer of software come between the platform and the developer ultimately results in sub-standard apps and hinders the enhancement and progress of the platform. If developers grow dependent on third party development libraries and tools, they can only take advantage of platform enhancements if and when the third party chooses to adopt the new features. We cannot be at the mercy of a third party deciding if and when they will make our enhancements available to our developers.

This becomes even worse if the third party is supplying a cross platform development tool. The third party may not adopt enhancements from one platform unless they are available on all of their supported platforms. Hence developers only have access to the lowest common denominator set of features. Again, we cannot accept an outcome where developers are blocked from using our innovations and enhancements because they are not available on our competitor’s platforms.

Yes.

Not everything, but no hardware manufacturer has the right to dictate what tools you may and may not use to develop on their platform.

Apple's not dictating what tools you may or may not use to develop on iPhone OS. Apple's dictating what tools you may use to develop software you wish to distribute through their distribution channel.

I'm sure the Cydia store would have no problem approving Flash-to-.ipa iPhone OS apps.

If you want to use Apple's distribution channel, you have to play by Apple's rules. If you don't like Apple's rules, there's always Android.

You still think that you're going to have a desktop in 5 years, don't you?

I don't know what I'm going to have in five years. Neither do you.

By 2020, you will not be able to buy a phone without the ability to dock it in this manner.

You're extrapolating today's use cases to what will be possible with tomorrow's technology.

Here's a hint for you: Today's use cases won't be around in 2020. I don't know what will be on my desk in 2020, but I can almost guarantee you it won't be a docking station for my mobile phone into which I plug in a monitor and a printer.