We already have names for it - consciousness, or self awareness as you used.
Labelling it a "soul" provides no explanation whatsoever, it's just another label. And it's one that carries connotations, such as the idea of a soul being supernatural, or surviving after death without any physical form.
Just because we can't explain something, doesn't make any of these myths true, nor do they even constitute explanations.
The "Christians" you're talking about aren't Christians at all, and it's extremely unfair and short-sighted to assume that all Christians (not to forget Atheists) support such extremist (and un-Godly) views.
Aside from the No True Scotsman, you just declared homosexuality as sinful. Whilst I'm glad that you're not being as mean as some people, this hardly makes you innocent when you're going around accusing people of being sinful. If you think it would be extremely unfair and short-sighted of me to say, for example, that all Christians were evil, why are you doing that for homosexuality?
I'm sure that your ignorance shines through in many other areas.
Maybe, maybe not. Criticise him on something you have evidence for, rather than accusing him of being ignorant just because you assume it.
Most people follow a faith because it provides them with direction and meaning, not because they necessarily believe everything they are taught.
But why do they not acknowledge that providing them with direction and meaning doesn't make it true? It seems to me that they really do believe the things they claim.
I generally support religion for this very reason. Nihilism in our lower classes leads to much worse situations than a little faith.
We should also teach people about false dichotomies, evidently...
In what sense do you "support religion"?
(And nice bit of classism, there. "Yes, we should teach fairy tales, to keep the plebs in line"!)
Despite the fairly recent anti-Apple sentiment on/., which actually seemed to start with the launch of the iPhone App Store
You must be reading a different Slashdot to me. Whilst the comments on this story seem to be an exception, most of the time it's nothing but praise, with criticisms getting modded down. Not to mention the daily Iphone story (or more) we've had for years. That level of advertising, sorry, coverage, isn't what I would expect from an anti-Apple site.
Microsoft - do you think Windows 7 would be what it is now if Apple had quietly died around 1998/1999?
Yes. The biggest competition for Windows 7 is Windows XP, not "Mac" OS X.
Whilst they will always get some sales from natural upgrades as people buy new computers, for most people this will be many years apart. Microsoft still have an incentive to get people to buy new versions of their software, so like many software companies, they add new features in the hopes of encouraging upgrades.
Also, one of the incentives for Windows 7 was to make it more suitable for portable devices like netbooks. Apple have no presence here whatsoever, and even the late arrival of the Ipad appears to have turned out to be a wet blanket. No, the competition they had here was from Linux, which was easily capable of rivalling XP, and worked well on netbooks. But now, unfortunately for Linux, it seems that most netbooks on the market come with Windows 7 AFAICT.
And sure, competition is a good thing. But there's no reason to single Apple out as being the saviour - all companies, as well as open source, provide competition.
(I'm curious what other examples you had btw, if Microsoft was just one example?)
"iPhone" is pretty silly, granted, but "Iphone", which is/.'s alt-text for iPhone topics, is somehow even worse.
Though, how do we write it? This is the sad thing - Apple's candy-ass gen-Y astroturfing has led us into thinking that trademarks are normal English, and correct English regarding proper nouns looks "wrong".
The simple answer would be to not have a topic for it at all. We don't have topics for every other range of phones, even from those companies that sell far more than Apple do (which is most of them).
Quiz: Is it "Blackberry" or "BlackBerry"? Even the BBC can't get this right, sometimes calling it one, then the other. Is there a backwards R in your font for when a newspaper wants to write "Toys R Us"? As soon as you start trying to reproduce the stylised trademark logos, things can quickly become complicated...
Web stats are very unreliable. We know that Symbian, RIM and now Android are outselling the Iphone platform, but they show up less on web stats. They're not even included at all on your reference!
And well - I like Linux and don't mean any insult by this - but saying "Less popular than Linux" isn't exactly making a compelling argument for saying one should commercially develop for a platform. Whilst there is commercial development on Linux, it's far less than Windows or even "Mac" OS X.
Anyhow, even if you do trust those jokey web stats, Java ME still comes out ahead as 0.78%. And that's got a market of billions; almost all phones support Java (only a few can't even do Java, like dumb phones and Iphones).
Clarification: actually I've come across those Wikipedia pages before, and there is confusion over which page refers to what version of Symbian. Indeed, Wikipedia suggests that my 5800 is running Symbian^1, which is apparently also the same as the latest S60 anyway.
But note that Qt is now the SDK even for the older Symbian platforms like S60 (even my old 5800 runs it fine, as well as dirt cheap phones like the 5230), and not just Symbian^4.
So Wikipedia is out of date, and needs to be updated. I'll do it later (using the refs that you decided to ignore).
I don't know the Symbian SDK, but according to wiki
Then Wikipedia is out of date. And indeed, if you bother to read the top of your own link:
"This article is about the historical Symbian OS. For the current, open source Symbian platform descended from Symbian OS and S60, see Symbian platform."
For heaven's sake, I even posted direct links to Nokia! Nice to see that a mod favours Wikipedia over the primary source - who can't even be bothered to read the link posted! (Particularly ironic given that Wikipedia is usually hated round here).
"Nokia acquired Trolltech ASA in 2008 and changed the name first to Qt Software, then to Qt Development Frameworks. Since then it focused on Qt development to turn it into the main development platform for its devices, including a port to the Symbian S60 platform. Version 1.0 of the Nokia Qt SDK was released on 23 June 2010."
What takes longer is the SDK, but I think that's true of all platforms.
Not with Qt. It's incredibly easy to get to grips with.
Honestly, the amount of Apple RDF here is getting depressing. By all means prefer your beloved Iphone if you prefer, but don't spread false claims about Symbian development, when you clearly are years out of date, and have already been proven wrong with references. Otherwise I'm going to start criticising the Iphone for not being able to even copy/paste, do MMS, or multitask; and claim that Macs still can't multitask either.
To follow on from my comment - I predict that when Android is consistently and clearly outselling the Iphone platform (and it will soon enough), Iphone fans will no longer make any mention of sales when talking about comparing Android (they still will with Palm and Windows mobile though).
When Android was selling less than the Iphones, as with Palm and Windows mobile, Iphone fans made no end of comments of how Android was selling less, to claim the Iphone being better. Now the sales figures are close, it's something that's hotly debated. Yet when Android soars into third place, leaving Apple in fourth, all mention of sales figures compared with Android will mysteriously be forgetten - as with Symbian and RIM - instead fans will resort to comments like "But the Iphone has more mindshare than Android" or "But me and my friends have Iphones, I'm going to ignore those stats" or "But look, one week after the Iphone 5 was released, it was the best selling phone in some random country I've never even been to - that counts more than overall sales, right?". (Yes, that last one happened - funny how we've never had any stories since on what the best selling phones are for any other month, either in Japan, or for the countless other countries in the world...)
It's simple. Writing apps for blackberry and symbian is expensive, and developing for them is non trivial.
Your evidence for this claim? Symbian uses standard C++, with the SDK being Qt. Having recently started learning Qt for Symbian, I have to say it's one of the best application toolkits I've come across, and I'm tempted to switch to it for my Windows development too.
(Possibly you are thinking of the old Symbian C++, that apparently was a bit harder to learn?)
As for expense, Qt is free, and the development environment available on a range of platforms.
Developing apps for android and the iphone is simple.
For Android it's simple - but not more simple. For Iphone, yeah, you only have to learn a new language, and buy a whole new machine from Apple for it... not to mention paying Apple for the privilege of releasing apps on your phone. And you say Symbian is expensive?
Maybe if Symbian or Blackberry were to create a simple to set up dev environment, there would be more developers.
Golly, if only they had something like that. Yet even if this wasn't the case, requiring that developers learn a whole new language and buy an Apple PC is evidently not an excuse for not supporting the Iphone, so I don't see these excuses would be relevant anyway.
Indeed, they were more concerned with writing an app for the three Iphone users.
(I have to laugh that with Palm, it's continually compared to the Iphone in terms of how it's sold far less - and I've seen such comparisons in the media too; yet no one is willing to compare the Iphone to RIM or Symbian in terms of sales. Oh no, then for some reason, actual sales don't count, and we have to wheel out vague terms like "mindshare" as being important. Even places like the BBC play this trick in their phone coverage.)
Though, to be fair I see that Vonage are planning a Blackberry port. But still no mention of Symbian. Perhaps they're going in reverse order of popularity...
Hear hear. I wonder what goes through the head of these app writers. It's a choice of:
* Write for J2ME, and have a market of two billion Java phones, capturing near 100% of the market (basically everything except those phones that can't handle it, like dumb phones and Iphones). * Write for Symbian and get the largest "smartphone" market share - the largest platform after J2ME. * Write for Blackberry, and get the largest "smartphone" market share in the US. * Or... write for Iphone, and get a whopping 3% of the market.
At least they included Android, which has the point that it's growing fastest. But that can't be said for Apple, who are now fourth place, both in terms of actual sales, and the rate at which those sales are increasing ( http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1741954&cid=33130584 ) - and there's no excuse for Symbian and Blackberry to be ignored so often.
It's especially frustrating when public funded organisations like the BBC or UK Government only release Iphone apps. When they only supported Windows (e.g., BBC's Iplayer), there were uproars! And at least there they could say that Windows was the largest platform, with over 90% market share! But yet when they release only for the Iphone, covering just a few per cent of users, and one of the smaller platforms, apparently that's perfectly fine...
I also note they completely ignore the two largest smartphone platforms - Symbian and RIM. It sucks having the most popular smartphone OS.
I suppose we should be lucky they even considered Android. It's depressing how many companies (and even public funded organisations like the BBC and UK Government) are only writing applications for the Iphone, which is fourth in terms of sales, and also fourth in terms of how fast those sales are growing ( http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1741954&cid=33130584 ). Symbian and Android are increasing their sales by a factor of two faster than Apple, and RIM are also slightly ahead of Apple. Not to mention that among phones as a whole, Iphones comprise only about 3% of the entire market (and Android has yet to make it much beyond that figure). Given that both of you need to have an Iphone or Android phone running this app, it seems particularly limited. A phone service between only a mere few per cent of the population - great...
What on earth? The Amiga hasn't been around for years, and when it was, plenty of people used it, especially as a home computer. What next, are you going to make jokes on the lack of users today of classic MacOS or DOS? It's 2010, not 1990.
Maybe you and the Iphone users can have some "pity sex", you mean - Apple are the company with about 3% market share in phones, and even in the ill-defined smartphone category, they're fourth. And that's with the Iphones still available to buy, unlike the Amiga.
I suspect that this site would have got massively more hits than any given individual pr0n web page, especially when we consider the large amounts of media coverage this has got (with the media spinning it as a good thing).
More generally, even if it's benign, it's still worrying that there's a gaping exploit out in the wild, where many people won't know to visit this web page. (It's also irresponsible of the media to spin this is a good thing; if it was Internet Explorer, there'd be no end of criticism about how bad it was.)
It Just Works.
Yes, getting your phone rooted by a web page certainly Just Works.
This can happen eventually, but it doesn't mean that any misspelling, no matter how common, is correct. By your logic, there's no such thing as bad spelling, just so long as other people make the same mistake!
What happened to saying "Oh yes, you're right. Thanks for correcting me"? Instead we now have people trying to claim that their misspelling is correct English, simply based on the claim that English is defined by how people write.
Apple will have a press conference on Friday about the exploit. Apparently all phones can be jailbroken, which they will demonstration on a Droid, WinMo & Blackberry.
Apparently "all" phones, but they forget a model from the market leading platform...
How do those who berate Apple's walled-garden approach feel about games consoles?
Well, I wouldn't view a games console as a computer in any sense.
It genuinely puzzles me why we don't hear nearly so many complaints about the lack of open access to consoles,
Because people try to pass the Iphones off as smartphones, and compare them to platforms that aren't locked down, like Symbian, RIM and Android.
approach to a phone is evil
It's not evil. It's a valid reason to criticise the platform (just as Apple fans criticise Windows, Android, Symbian etc). And it would be a concern if thanks to all the Apple coverage in the media (whilst other companies in the mobile space are virtually ignored), that Apple became dominant in mobile computing (just as it would be worrying if say, PCs disappeared and were replaced with locked down games consoles). Thankfully though, that doesn't seem to be happening, with Apple in fourth place, and Android, Symbian and RIM all increasing their lead over Apple.
Slashdot Mirror
We already have names for it - consciousness, or self awareness as you used.
Labelling it a "soul" provides no explanation whatsoever, it's just another label. And it's one that carries connotations, such as the idea of a soul being supernatural, or surviving after death without any physical form.
Just because we can't explain something, doesn't make any of these myths true, nor do they even constitute explanations.
Homosexuality is a sin (because relationships based on sexual preference are, naturally, sinful),
Just like all relationships then, except for those asexual ones.
And don't forget about the shellfish.
And what were you doing posting on Slashdot last Sunday?
The "Christians" you're talking about aren't Christians at all, and it's extremely unfair and short-sighted to assume that all Christians (not to forget Atheists) support such extremist (and un-Godly) views.
Aside from the No True Scotsman, you just declared homosexuality as sinful. Whilst I'm glad that you're not being as mean as some people, this hardly makes you innocent when you're going around accusing people of being sinful. If you think it would be extremely unfair and short-sighted of me to say, for example, that all Christians were evil, why are you doing that for homosexuality?
Funnily enough, a similar process applies to making stories about the Iphone newsworthy.
Take a mundane story (like "You can view this web page"), and add "On An iPhone" to it - instant front page news!
I'm sure that your ignorance shines through in many other areas.
Maybe, maybe not. Criticise him on something you have evidence for, rather than accusing him of being ignorant just because you assume it.
Most people follow a faith because it provides them with direction and meaning, not because they necessarily believe everything they are taught.
But why do they not acknowledge that providing them with direction and meaning doesn't make it true? It seems to me that they really do believe the things they claim.
I generally support religion for this very reason. Nihilism in our lower classes leads to much worse situations than a little faith.
We should also teach people about false dichotomies, evidently...
In what sense do you "support religion"?
(And nice bit of classism, there. "Yes, we should teach fairy tales, to keep the plebs in line"!)
Despite the fairly recent anti-Apple sentiment on /., which actually seemed to start with the launch of the iPhone App Store
You must be reading a different Slashdot to me. Whilst the comments on this story seem to be an exception, most of the time it's nothing but praise, with criticisms getting modded down. Not to mention the daily Iphone story (or more) we've had for years. That level of advertising, sorry, coverage, isn't what I would expect from an anti-Apple site.
Microsoft - do you think Windows 7 would be what it is now if Apple had quietly died around 1998/1999?
Yes. The biggest competition for Windows 7 is Windows XP, not "Mac" OS X.
Whilst they will always get some sales from natural upgrades as people buy new computers, for most people this will be many years apart. Microsoft still have an incentive to get people to buy new versions of their software, so like many software companies, they add new features in the hopes of encouraging upgrades.
Also, one of the incentives for Windows 7 was to make it more suitable for portable devices like netbooks. Apple have no presence here whatsoever, and even the late arrival of the Ipad appears to have turned out to be a wet blanket. No, the competition they had here was from Linux, which was easily capable of rivalling XP, and worked well on netbooks. But now, unfortunately for Linux, it seems that most netbooks on the market come with Windows 7 AFAICT.
And sure, competition is a good thing. But there's no reason to single Apple out as being the saviour - all companies, as well as open source, provide competition.
(I'm curious what other examples you had btw, if Microsoft was just one example?)
"iPhone" is pretty silly, granted, but "Iphone", which is /.'s alt-text for iPhone topics, is somehow even worse.
Though, how do we write it? This is the sad thing - Apple's candy-ass gen-Y astroturfing has led us into thinking that trademarks are normal English, and correct English regarding proper nouns looks "wrong".
The simple answer would be to not have a topic for it at all. We don't have topics for every other range of phones, even from those companies that sell far more than Apple do (which is most of them).
Quiz: Is it "Blackberry" or "BlackBerry"? Even the BBC can't get this right, sometimes calling it one, then the other. Is there a backwards R in your font for when a newspaper wants to write "Toys R Us"? As soon as you start trying to reproduce the stylised trademark logos, things can quickly become complicated...
Web stats are very unreliable. We know that Symbian, RIM and now Android are outselling the Iphone platform, but they show up less on web stats. They're not even included at all on your reference!
And well - I like Linux and don't mean any insult by this - but saying "Less popular than Linux" isn't exactly making a compelling argument for saying one should commercially develop for a platform. Whilst there is commercial development on Linux, it's far less than Windows or even "Mac" OS X.
Anyhow, even if you do trust those jokey web stats, Java ME still comes out ahead as 0.78%. And that's got a market of billions; almost all phones support Java (only a few can't even do Java, like dumb phones and Iphones).
So if a stranger asked your for naked pics of your gf, with the face blurred out, you'd happily comply?
You might as well argue someone is making an unreasonable search because they photographed your shadow.
If that's true, why don't they just photograph our shadows?
My understanding is that they show more detail than that.
He said "The US gov. is much too large."
He said that, correct.
Shrinking the government to an ineffective size will kill the government.
He didn't say that. You're still arguing with a straw man.
Clarification: actually I've come across those Wikipedia pages before, and there is confusion over which page refers to what version of Symbian. Indeed, Wikipedia suggests that my 5800 is running Symbian^1, which is apparently also the same as the latest S60 anyway.
But note that Qt is now the SDK even for the older Symbian platforms like S60 (even my old 5800 runs it fine, as well as dirt cheap phones like the 5230), and not just Symbian^4.
So Wikipedia is out of date, and needs to be updated. I'll do it later (using the refs that you decided to ignore).
I don't know the Symbian SDK, but according to wiki
Then Wikipedia is out of date. And indeed, if you bother to read the top of your own link:
"This article is about the historical Symbian OS. For the current, open source Symbian platform descended from Symbian OS and S60, see Symbian platform."
For heaven's sake, I even posted direct links to Nokia! Nice to see that a mod favours Wikipedia over the primary source - who can't even be bothered to read the link posted! (Particularly ironic given that Wikipedia is usually hated round here).
And if you do want Wikipedia, try:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qt_(framework) :
"Nokia acquired Trolltech ASA in 2008 and changed the name first to Qt Software, then to Qt Development Frameworks. Since then it focused on Qt development to turn it into the main development platform for its devices, including a port to the Symbian S60 platform. Version 1.0 of the Nokia Qt SDK was released on 23 June 2010."
What takes longer is the SDK, but I think that's true of all platforms.
Not with Qt. It's incredibly easy to get to grips with.
Honestly, the amount of Apple RDF here is getting depressing. By all means prefer your beloved Iphone if you prefer, but don't spread false claims about Symbian development, when you clearly are years out of date, and have already been proven wrong with references. Otherwise I'm going to start criticising the Iphone for not being able to even copy/paste, do MMS, or multitask; and claim that Macs still can't multitask either.
To follow on from my comment - I predict that when Android is consistently and clearly outselling the Iphone platform (and it will soon enough), Iphone fans will no longer make any mention of sales when talking about comparing Android (they still will with Palm and Windows mobile though).
When Android was selling less than the Iphones, as with Palm and Windows mobile, Iphone fans made no end of comments of how Android was selling less, to claim the Iphone being better. Now the sales figures are close, it's something that's hotly debated. Yet when Android soars into third place, leaving Apple in fourth, all mention of sales figures compared with Android will mysteriously be forgetten - as with Symbian and RIM - instead fans will resort to comments like "But the Iphone has more mindshare than Android" or "But me and my friends have Iphones, I'm going to ignore those stats" or "But look, one week after the Iphone 5 was released, it was the best selling phone in some random country I've never even been to - that counts more than overall sales, right?". (Yes, that last one happened - funny how we've never had any stories since on what the best selling phones are for any other month, either in Japan, or for the countless other countries in the world...)
It's simple. Writing apps for blackberry and symbian is expensive, and developing for them is non trivial.
Your evidence for this claim? Symbian uses standard C++, with the SDK being Qt. Having recently started learning Qt for Symbian, I have to say it's one of the best application toolkits I've come across, and I'm tempted to switch to it for my Windows development too.
(Possibly you are thinking of the old Symbian C++, that apparently was a bit harder to learn?)
As for expense, Qt is free, and the development environment available on a range of platforms.
Developing apps for android and the iphone is simple.
For Android it's simple - but not more simple. For Iphone, yeah, you only have to learn a new language, and buy a whole new machine from Apple for it... not to mention paying Apple for the privilege of releasing apps on your phone. And you say Symbian is expensive?
Maybe if Symbian or Blackberry were to create a simple to set up dev environment, there would be more developers.
Golly, if only they had something like that. Yet even if this wasn't the case, requiring that developers learn a whole new language and buy an Apple PC is evidently not an excuse for not supporting the Iphone, so I don't see these excuses would be relevant anyway.
Indeed, they were more concerned with writing an app for the three Iphone users.
(I have to laugh that with Palm, it's continually compared to the Iphone in terms of how it's sold far less - and I've seen such comparisons in the media too; yet no one is willing to compare the Iphone to RIM or Symbian in terms of sales. Oh no, then for some reason, actual sales don't count, and we have to wheel out vague terms like "mindshare" as being important. Even places like the BBC play this trick in their phone coverage.)
Though, to be fair I see that Vonage are planning a Blackberry port. But still no mention of Symbian. Perhaps they're going in reverse order of popularity...
Hear hear. I wonder what goes through the head of these app writers. It's a choice of:
* Write for J2ME, and have a market of two billion Java phones, capturing near 100% of the market (basically everything except those phones that can't handle it, like dumb phones and Iphones). ... write for Iphone, and get a whopping 3% of the market.
* Write for Symbian and get the largest "smartphone" market share - the largest platform after J2ME.
* Write for Blackberry, and get the largest "smartphone" market share in the US.
* Or
At least they included Android, which has the point that it's growing fastest. But that can't be said for Apple, who are now fourth place, both in terms of actual sales, and the rate at which those sales are increasing ( http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1741954&cid=33130584 ) - and there's no excuse for Symbian and Blackberry to be ignored so often.
It's especially frustrating when public funded organisations like the BBC or UK Government only release Iphone apps. When they only supported Windows (e.g., BBC's Iplayer), there were uproars! And at least there they could say that Windows was the largest platform, with over 90% market share! But yet when they release only for the Iphone, covering just a few per cent of users, and one of the smaller platforms, apparently that's perfectly fine...
I also note they completely ignore the two largest smartphone platforms - Symbian and RIM. It sucks having the most popular smartphone OS.
I suppose we should be lucky they even considered Android. It's depressing how many companies (and even public funded organisations like the BBC and UK Government) are only writing applications for the Iphone, which is fourth in terms of sales, and also fourth in terms of how fast those sales are growing ( http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1741954&cid=33130584 ). Symbian and Android are increasing their sales by a factor of two faster than Apple, and RIM are also slightly ahead of Apple. Not to mention that among phones as a whole, Iphones comprise only about 3% of the entire market (and Android has yet to make it much beyond that figure). Given that both of you need to have an Iphone or Android phone running this app, it seems particularly limited. A phone service between only a mere few per cent of the population - great...
What on earth? The Amiga hasn't been around for years, and when it was, plenty of people used it, especially as a home computer. What next, are you going to make jokes on the lack of users today of classic MacOS or DOS? It's 2010, not 1990.
Maybe you and the Iphone users can have some "pity sex", you mean - Apple are the company with about 3% market share in phones, and even in the ill-defined smartphone category, they're fourth. And that's with the Iphones still available to buy, unlike the Amiga.
I suspect that this site would have got massively more hits than any given individual pr0n web page, especially when we consider the large amounts of media coverage this has got (with the media spinning it as a good thing).
And you know to trust a random web page?
More generally, even if it's benign, it's still worrying that there's a gaping exploit out in the wild, where many people won't know to visit this web page. (It's also irresponsible of the media to spin this is a good thing; if it was Internet Explorer, there'd be no end of criticism about how bad it was.)
It Just Works.
Yes, getting your phone rooted by a web page certainly Just Works.
This can happen eventually, but it doesn't mean that any misspelling, no matter how common, is correct. By your logic, there's no such thing as bad spelling, just so long as other people make the same mistake!
What happened to saying "Oh yes, you're right. Thanks for correcting me"? Instead we now have people trying to claim that their misspelling is correct English, simply based on the claim that English is defined by how people write.
I thought that exploits and malware only affected jailbroken Iphones, so they deserve what they get.
Oh wait...
(Apple, getting hacked Just Works!)
Apple will have a press conference on Friday about the exploit. Apparently all phones can be jailbroken, which they will demonstration on a Droid, WinMo & Blackberry.
Apparently "all" phones, but they forget a model from the market leading platform...
How do those who berate Apple's walled-garden approach feel about games consoles?
Well, I wouldn't view a games console as a computer in any sense.
It genuinely puzzles me why we don't hear nearly so many complaints about the lack of open access to consoles,
Because people try to pass the Iphones off as smartphones, and compare them to platforms that aren't locked down, like Symbian, RIM and Android.
approach to a phone is evil
It's not evil. It's a valid reason to criticise the platform (just as Apple fans criticise Windows, Android, Symbian etc). And it would be a concern if thanks to all the Apple coverage in the media (whilst other companies in the mobile space are virtually ignored), that Apple became dominant in mobile computing (just as it would be worrying if say, PCs disappeared and were replaced with locked down games consoles). Thankfully though, that doesn't seem to be happening, with Apple in fourth place, and Android, Symbian and RIM all increasing their lead over Apple.