Hippo, birdies, two ewes...

... to nrivkis!! Have a good one!

I'll skip the iPhone, thanks

From Slashdot via gmcdavid we get this article referencing this New York Times article (soul-sucking registration required) quoting Jobs as saying that the iPhone will not be an open environment:

"We define everything that is on the phone," he said. "You don't want your phone to be like a PC. The last thing you want is to have loaded three apps on your phone and then you go to make a call and it doesn't work anymore. These are more like iPods than they are like computers.'

The iPhone, he insisted, would not look like the rest of the wireless industry.

"These are devices that need to work, and you can't do that if you load any software on them," he said. "That doesn't mean there's not going to be software to buy that you can load on them coming from us. It doesn't mean we have to write it all, but it means it has to be more of a controlled environment."

gmcdavid also points to another NYT article titled "Want an iPhone? Beware the iHandcuffs" about Apple's DRM and how it serves Apple's interests, not those of either the artists or the consumers.

There's a lot to be said for keeping phones as simple appliances without extra features cluttering up the UI, and add-on software making them less reliable. I actually agree with that to a large extent, which is precisely why my cell phone is just a phone, with my PDA and camera separate devices. The total price of a basic Nokia phone, a Nokia 770 tablet, and a Casio camera was less than the price of the cheapest iPhone; the tablet has WiFi, Bluetooth, and Linux. I'll probably eventually spring for a Linux-based phone, provided it's programmable and not carrier-locked.