[Acer Iconia A500] The_Monkey_King:
My two cents:

1) it's really not a good idea to start of a conversation with someone you want to give you a welcoming response with "I informed them that Acer has a reputation of being hostile to the development community." You don't want to kiss their ass but you certainly don't want to tell a company that everyone hates them and then expect them to do something nice for you.

2) Market penetration versus market stability. Right now Acer has a product that is readily available. Reviews have been mixed. (I ignore the ones who ***** about weight because 0.2 ounce difference is two quarters and three dimes in weight. Grow a f*cking pair biceps, you wieners.) But CNET and all the other mainstream reviewers claim that an iPad (not iPad II) and the Asus Transformer are the better deals.

But let's be honest about the responses. Sure, iPad is a gimme because it's a hip, cultural thing. Just like telling some kid that Pabst Blue Ribbon beer is **** will not get them to change brands as long as it is perceived to be "cool." So forget the iPad. As for the Transformer? Sure you can have an unlocked bootlader and new snazzy 3.1 roms, but who besides the true fanboy has one of them? They won't have stock until October of this year, and then it will be newer more powerful models coming out. The majority of people have bought a computer (desktop) and a cellphone and that's as far as they go in tech. Sure you have an iPhone but do they really use it for computing and service? They load the apps that their kids told them to. Acer can fill this gap by doing one or two things in the immediate future that could lock them into a top spot: drop the price of A500 by $40 or, work with the telcos to build and ship the next gen, wireless tablet. They are not going to drop the price because the units are selling enough that some bean counter says it competes with the other tablets in the market. But this would be an issue if Asus had their **** together and had the Transformer in plenty of stock.

This is the reason for the locked bootlader. If companies plan to add wireless to the next gen (or rev) tablets, they will get a lot of attention from the telcos. The phone companies do not, I repeat, do not want unlimited broadband connectivity. These are the same people who still charge for cell-phone texts. Why? Because they can and they know people will go over limits. Limits and exceeding them rack in the dollars. And they have millions of dollars set aside to keep their limits (profits rolling in).

If the broadband wireless next version of the Acer is different enough in Honeycomb 3.1 than the A500, then they might release an unlocked profile for the small group of XDA developers and those that read this forum. For the general population (and the large amount of sales), telcos want locked systems so that metered broadband is the norm. But if there is any way of porting and unlocked A500 to the wireless model, I don't think they'll do it. Also, it shows good faith to the telcos that they are already in step with them about creating limits on the user base. The phone companies will show favor to locked systems over the others. And that's the second choice Acer already made.