Although I'll grant you that Apple doesn't have a monopoly, putting them in the same market segment as RIM is disingenuous at best.

AFAIK, there are no legitimate competitors to RIM's BES, giving them a nearly 100% market share in their segment.

In the consumer segment, there's Apple, Android, Palm, Blackberry, and other phones of above-average intelligence. It's actually a fairly competitive market at the moment.

Apple's behavior here is pretty rotten (they finally passed Hanlon's razor with these new restrictions), although they're not a monopoly. IMHO, we need some consumer protection laws to prevent Apple/Sony from arbitrarily locking down their devices. Their current behavior is definitely wrong, and definitely against the public interest -- however, it's also almost definitely legal.

Yes, and we're proud of it. Different interests and skill sets. Graphics people are about graphics. Linux people are about Linux. The overlap is very small. For most of us the Gimp is not viable. The command line is a total PITA and less than viable. Customizability? Absolutely. I've customized the hell out of Photoshop.