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Doctorow on the War on General Purpose Computing
Cory Doctorow has posted the content of his talk delivered at Google this month on what he calls the coming civil war over general purpose computing. He neatly crystallizes the problem with certain types of (widely called-for) regulation of devices and the software they run — and they all run software. The ability to stop a general purpose computer from doing nearly anything (running code without permission from the mothership, or requiring an authorities-only engine kill switch, or preventing a car from speeding away), he says boils down to a demand: "Make me a general-purpose computer that runs all programs except for one program that freaks me out."
"But there's a problem. We don't know how to make a computer that can run all the programs we can compile except for whichever one pisses off a regulator, or disrupts a business model, or abets a criminal. The closest approximation we have for such a device is a computer with spyware on it— a computer that, if you do the wrong thing, can intercede and say, 'I can't let you do that, Dave.'"
Stop thinking YOU posses the only right answer. People perceive this as a feature. Apple keeps their devices largely free of malware. This is a benefit to them, and one of the major reasons Apple has grown so big so fast.
Your opinion is not "right", and you are not better than everyone else. People get to make up their own minds, even if you don't like what they decide. If they're tired of the fucked up malware ridden mess that is the Windows PC world, and they value an easy to use and largely safe computing experience, then they have every right to this.