> So tell me the equivalent method to gain complete root access on an iphone. Not a jailbreak or unofficial firmware, an actual supported method by which you can become root and change anything on the device. Unless I am badly misinformed, this doesn't exist

There isn't one, and there has never been a way to officially gain full root on an iphone. Which is fine, iphones were never marketed as a general computing device, it's a smartphone.

> Your faith in Apple to not lock out SIP (or otherwise continue their trend of turning their products into appliances) requires ignoring that Apple already did that on other products.

I could care less what apple does, it's not my primary operating system, FreeBSD is.

> So all Apple (or whomever) has to do to take away features is to make sure they have a way to satisfy or distract most of the developers and technical users. As this is not a large group of people, if they have a workaround, it does not change much.

SIP isn't taking away features, it is a feature. Secondly if apple has a well documented workaround for their more restrictive features, then yes this is the best of both worlds. As the OpenBSD crowd has shown, security features need to be on by default or they are rarely used. Apple can't rely on most of their user's to turn on the various security features. Most Linux user's turn off selinux because it's hard to setup, and I would wager Linux users are more technical on average then Mac users. And by allowing a way to turn off these security features for those who need to, it allows for people to do whatever they want with their Mac.

> How many competitors are there for people to switch to? Are you stretching the definition and including competitors that are not compatible and would require re-purchasing software because the software they already paid for isn't compatible?

There's plenty of competition in both mobile phones and personal computer markets. For mobile phones you can get smartphones from Apple, Samsung, HTC, Microsoft, BlackBerry, and a few more. As for personal computers there's Apple, HP, Dell, Lenovo, Asus, Toshiba, etc, etc. I also would like to add that even if these various products are not compatible it does not mean they are not competitors. Blenders from two different manufacturers are not compatible, but they are most definitely competing for customers.

> Sometimes this isn't about YOU. This kind of selfish attitude is what allows corporations to continue taking advantage of other people.

When it's about me and my laptop, Only thing I care about is whether I'm satisfied. And I think it's strange that you think this is an example of Apple taking advantage of people, when Apple has done far worse things to people, such as their use of cheap labour when they could easily afford to pay those people more. SIP is a good thing.

> Sometimes this isn't about YOU. This kind of selfish attitude is what allows corporations to continue taking advantage of other people.

The reason corporations do as they please is because people don't hold politicians accountable. Secondly I would like to say, have you thought whether YOU are being selfish? You want a company YOU don't own to change their product to satisfy YOUR view on how they should make their product. Especially considering this feature protects users from various types of attacks such as, loading rootkits, and hooking library functions.

> More importantly, I find it interesting that you completely ignored the topic of the War On General Purpose Computing, which is central to this discussion. Doctorow's 28C3 talk directly address these problems and refutes many of your replies. Do you want to learn about this problem, which has been going on for many years, or are you an apparatchik that believes Apple can do no wrong?

I ignored it because it was late and I was tired, but again reading through that first article, it seems like another case of people telling others how they run their business. The MPAA and RIAA, infuriate me, as well as DRM, So you know what I did, I stopped purchasing products that I knew had DRM, and I stopped going to the movie theater. As for the abuses of the DMCA law by John Deer and others people should be simultaneously not purchasing their products while lobbying their representative about changing this broken law.

And from my point of view there is no war on general computing, this is not the 80's and 90's where most software was proprietary. Computer user's have more choices for free, open source software then they ever did. Now were even seeing a open hardware movement!