Apple has a lot of very positive points going for it (moreso with their recent changes to be less aggressive towards developers), however many of these pro-iPhone pieces (make no mistake, that is what this submission is, with such a distorted view of the world) could be mechanically written by simply parsing the dominant talking points and mashing them together into some sort of superficial slurry that passes a cursory scan test, but falls apart when you actually look at it with any detail.

EDIT: For those without any sense of informational discretion, let me extract the pertinent pieces-

-Apple made an exclusive deal with AT&T. Meaning they bound themselves to a carrier to a much greater degree than historically normal.

-Facetime doesn't work over anything but WiFi -- this is not a technical limitation. Tethering doesn't work without a tethering plan, after finally, grudgingly, being rolled out. Google Voice was strongly believed to be blocked (along with similar apps) because AT&T vetoed it.

-Apple's original resistance to the whole concept of apps was sold on the idea that apps would go crazy and destroy the network. This, again, was bowing to AT&T.

-Apple absolutely and completely controls everything you install on your device. Comments about AT&T not allowing side-loading seem extraordinary when the champion example is Apple, which simply bars that universally. At least consumers can choose to buy a different Android device, perhaps on another carrier. That option isn't avialable for iOS.

-The fact that the Skype example keeps getting brought up points to the extraordinary shallowness of this argument. Skype got paid money by Verizon, presumably, to provide software for its handsets. This is software business-as-usual as long as time. This has nothing to do with Android, and that it keeps getting conflating as some counter example of openness is pure stupidity.

-The installation of Bing on some Verizon phones is exactly what the Android ecosystem allows. In fact Gruber some time back sarcastically (as such is the level of his wit) opined that maybe Android would get Bing given its "openness" (the point clearly being that of course it never would), yet here it is. That's the point. Consumers can choose to go elsewhere. Microsoft can completely coopt Android for their own purposes if they want, and that is how it is supposed to work.

Android is built on the assumption of competitive forces. Verizon's heavy-handedness on the Galaxy S will lose them customers.

Many of the comments in this discussion point to the extraordinary ignorance there is about the pre-iPhone world. Way prior to the iPhone I worked at a business where we distributed Windows Mobile applications: We required no blessing or grant from Microsoft, and on the handset we had pretty much universal control.

Apple's recent moves have made them decidedly less evil, but these current pro-Apple talking points are outrageous, and quite simply deceptively ignorant.

The core problem is that people still have a mentality that handsets should be from $49-$199, which means that you're going in with the carrier on your device. Of course most carriers let you bring your own device (if this isn't legally mandated, it nonetheless remains the practice), giving you an actual claim to own the device.