The alternative to a locked-down smartphone is Android-powered devices. So what's the alternative to a locked-down set-top video game system? (PCs generally aren't marketed as set-top.)

Manufacturers of locked-down devices will claim that purpose is whatever the box says purpose is. And since sometime in 2008, Nintendo's box says purpose is "unauthorized technical modifications will render your game or system unplayable".

How would this mesh with the ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY found in typical free software licenses?

The reason is that if people quit buying open devices, then companies will quit making them, and people who want them will have nowhere to get them. This has already been happening in video games: all of the platforms designed for local multiplayer (two to four gamepads and a large monitor) are cryptographically locked down.

Macs hold their resale value quite well. A lot of the used Macs that I see listed on eBay for less than the price of a new entry-level Windows PC are pre-2006 and therefore incapable of running the Intel-only iPhone SDK.

Multiply it by the number of years that one expects to use a device and it becomes $396, which is harder to justify.

And others have explained to you exactly why they don't.

iPod touch: $200, and $0/mo in service. Yet it still needs $396 in certificates over its expected four-year service life and a $599 Mac to compile the programs (instead of the computer that one already owns or can pick up for under $200 at a used computer shop). Now what was your point that others haven't already addressed?

How so? The toolchain for making Android apps runs on Apple, Dell, HP, Acer, or any other PC brand you can imagine. The toolchain for making iOS apps runs only on a computer manufactured by the same company that manufactured the iOS device.

Even when they've docked a keyboard and monitor to the device?

So in other words, I should figure the cost of replacing my current development workstation with the correct brand of development workstation and the cost of developer certificate renewals for the entire expected service life of the device into the total cost of ownership of such a device. Devices with "Galaxy" in the name are starting to look quite cheap now.

Archos 43 has no multitouch. Archos 43 has no legit access to the official app store. Sure, it has AppsLib, Amazon Appstore, Soc.io, and SlideME, but (for example) Chase Bank doesn't make its check deposit application available anywhere but Apple's App Store and Google's Android Market. So an iPod touch can run it but an Archos 43 cannot. The 9th-gen devices have solved this, but so far there's a 9th-gen Archos counterpart only to the iPad, not to the iPod touch. I haven't yet had a chance to try the recently released Samsung Galaxy Player, which I'm told is finally Android's complete answer to the iPod touch.

And unfortunately for both of us, people who don't care because they don't feel a need to do things that the DRM prevents could end up outpushing you because they still outnumber you.

Both a toaster and a washing machine could be described as peripherals controlled by some sort of computer. Compare to the fact that a printer is better at printing a document than a modem.

Yet. Smartphones are almost to the point where you could end up using a phone as a computer by plugging in an HDMI monitor, pairing to a Bluetooth keyboard, and using your phone as a trackpad.

And arguably, a computer that looks like a general-purpose computer but is locked down to run only applications digitally signed by its manufacturer has become over-specialized.

A general-purpose computer is capable of simulating a universal Turing machine, (or, if you want to get technical, a universal linear bounded automaton because it has limited RAM). The iPod touch, iPhone, and iPad cannot because there exist programs for the universal LBA that Apple categorically refuses to digitally sign.

A typical smartphone data plan is enough for about one 2 GB movie a month, after which point the carrier begins to charge prohibitive overages. Airplanes also tend not to provide affordable broadband Internet access. So how is this a strike against offline playback of video?

Which is why the report would have to be digitally signed by hardware with a certificate that the publisher trusts. Look up trusted platform module on Google to see how.

Not in the United States market. Slashdot is run from the United States, and I live in the United States. On May 15, 2010, I walked into a Best Buy store, a T-Mobile store, and a RadioShack store in Fort Wayne, Indiana. In each, I asked to try a Nokia N900 phone, and in each, I was disappointed.