Thank god for some sanity. I cannot for the life of me understand why otherwise intelligent geeks fawn over locked Apple products and the iPhone in particular.
Perhaps because it's a delight to use and look at?
Occasionally, when something is designed better than any other comparable device, you have to pay to use it. In this case, you pay by following a few of their rules.
And unless my main reason for buying a mobile phone is "for hacking," I don't see why I should pay $400 for the alternative (i.e. the Neo FreeRunner) when the iPhone "just works"--and nicely at that. How sure are we that the Neo FreeRunner would even be stable enough for use as a main phone?
When the day comes that I want to hack my phone, I'll get the FreeRunner. (Hopefully by then it'll be cheaper.) For now, I just want to use my phone.
You know, you can get "just a phone" for about $5 these days. Why are you shelling out for an iPhone? (The answer is because you don't want "just a phone".)
Only a minority of users need to have the inclination to hack their phone for all of them to benefit. Locking out Free Software is ultimately a short-sighted approach to releasing a new software platform.
I spent weeks getting a USB wireless adapter and a new-ish video card to work with my Linux desktop. Then I moved to a new apartment and the wireless driver can't handle the standard encryption used on our router, so I'm back to square one compiling kernels and blacklisting modules and spending hours booting back and forth into Windows again.
The point is, I don't want to do that with my phone. My phone should WORK. The ultimate solution to the desktop problem will be buying 100 feet of cat 5 cable at Fry's today. I drive too far to make this a practical solution for my phone.
The problem in your case is hardware, not software. If you had hardware specifically designed to work perfectly with Linux, it would work perfectly with Linux. Instead you have whatever you found at Best Buy.
Anyway, all phones designed to run Linux run Linux just fine. They... were designed to.
I am really disturbed whenever I read about one human being saying he is completely incapable of empathizing with another human being's choice.
Instead of trying to figure out why otherwise intelligent people like something you do not care for, why not just sit back and accept the idea that we all have different likes, dislikes, and preferences, and that we need not justify our particular differences to you before going about our merry way?
I am really disturbed whenever I read about one human being saying he is completely incapable of empathizing with another human being's choice.
Oh, I don't know about that. I am completely incapable of empathizing with the human being who chooses to beat his daughter to death for dating a boy from another religion. Or the human being who chooses to torture an animal for fun. Or the human being who... well actually I can't think of a third example which is significantly different from the first two.
But as far as purchases of consumer electronics goes... sure, do whatever you like! I really don't give a damn one way or the other.
While your examples are extreme, we are only talking about degrees of difference. For example, I empathize with people who send their country's youth off to a foreign land to fight and kill for oil even if I don't agree with their choice.
Empathizing is not the same thing as agreeing with or countenancing.
Oh, I don't know about that. I am completely incapable of empathizing with the human being who chooses to beat his daughter to death for dating a boy from another religion.
Because no other phone/mobile browser comes anywhere close to it in terms of features and ease of use?
For example the nokia n800 browser is terrible in comparison to Safari, using a stylus is a pain, and keyboard entry is slow. Also the battery lasts an hour or so.
Yes, it's open source, but that makes it hellishly hard to do anything with. Updating the firmware involves about 10 steps.
