iPhone ... is theirPhone ...

Well, it's already turning into a bummer. It appears that the iPhone is going to be locked down against 3rd party applications. What a loss. I was really looking forward to some sort of developer angle here ... but it seems that Apple is going to lock things up tightly when it comes to applications for the iPhone. From this article:

But it’s not like the walled garden has gone away. “You don’t want your phone to be an open platform,” meaning that anyone can write applications for it and potentially gum up the provider's network, says Jobs. “You need it to work when you need it to work. Cingular doesn’t want to see their West Coast network go down because some application messed up.”

In addition, I'm hearing more and more that they are locking the phone tight to the Cingular network ... not allowing you to change to alternate networks. David Isenberg comments on the same issues in his blog post: Apple blows it. I agree with him completely ... I'm shocked at the complete lock-in that Apple is creating around the iPhone. Bummer.

[tags: apple ipod iphone cingular]