And to be fair, I don't like the entire "company store" approach to software delivery. It didn't work with the miners over a century ago, and it still doesn't work today. Not only is there the cost and vendor lock-in (because they approve only the apps that won't compete with their revenue stream), but the stifling of freedom in app development.

Just a couple of examples, Apple has effectively full control over the store, and a rigorous app approval process. They will deny your app if it even vaguely resembles anything that they are doing or wanting to do. In fact, on the MacOS side, they have a habit of driving small entrepreneurs out of business. An independent dev creates a piece of shareware for the Mac which gets popular, then Apple will invite them to the corporate office, give feed them lunch, let them talk to the engineers, then next thing you know, its a feature of MacOS, and this dev is out of that income.

On the iphone/ipod, its much the same thing. Your app has to be approved before it goes into the store. What does this mean? That you are only going to have one "Apple-approved" app per type. Look at my N810. I have the following browsers installed, microb, fennec, tear and midori, and I am trying out each one, trying to determine my favorite. How many browsers are available on the ipod/iphone? Do you think that if Fluendo ported their codecs to the Archos 5, that Archos would let the package see the light of day in the app store?

To make matters worse, Apple also has a remote kill switch. So if you buy an app, and they decide later that it offends their corporate mores, they can remotely kill it off of your phone. Remember the app that made it into Apple's store called BabyShaker? I don't know how this ever got approved, but once it made the news that it had, Apple pulled it off of the app store and I believe removed from the ipones in the field. Similar to what Amazon did with 1984 and Animal Farm on the Kindle. If you are in contact with *any* corporate app store, this is something that you are likely to find. Could that have happened with FBreader on the N810? Next to impossible.

This is my problem with the app store approach to software delivery. Someone has to own the store, and if it is the manufacturer of the device, then they can't help but to see it as a secondary revenue stream, that the purchase of the device is simply an cost of entry. It stifles app development, stifles freedom of expression and locks you into one company's way of doing things.

Obviously just my opinion,
--vr