One thing I love about Dan Gillmor’s recent article on switching is his emphasis on the increasing control Apple is exercising over their customers.
Whereas I’m free to use any software I want to access my Android phone when I dock it, your iPhone will only work consistently with iTunes from Apple, and only the apps that Apple allows into the iTunes store. Buying media in that store? Good luck accessing that media in places Apple hasn’t decided you should.
It comes down to Apple (and Steve Jobs) knowing what’s best. And doing what’s best for you. They don’t. They do what is best for them.
I think I’ve mentioned before an experience my wife had with the home movies she likes to make in iMovie (I’m not making her switch). For years we had been buying iTunes music with DRM and since we used Macs that wasn’t a problem. We spent lots of money in that store- it’s easy to after all. And we had a lot of fun using that music in our home movies. Without notice or warning, an update came out an suddently DRM music from iTunes couldn’t be used in iMovie. Oh, we tried lots of things. But Apple had decided we couldn’t use that music in our home movies. Even though we had paid for it.
We buy all our digital music from Amazon now. We don’t live in Apple’s little Animal Farm anymore.