[roebeet]

I never understood why people find closed systems to be a "good" thing. Imagine if we had these same locks in place for things like cars or homes. You'd have cars that could only work on certain roads that are pre-approved by the car maker, or homes with proprietary sockets so only approved appliances could be used. But, since that would make things "safer" for us that's better, right?

Life is supposed to have risks - I'd much prefer open systems where some "bad" things might slip through than having companies spoon-feed me. In the case of Apple, jailbreaking should be a supported option - let people take the risk if they want to and let the others use the official App store. And for ebooks, all devices and bookstores should support at least one book standard. Giving that EPUB seems to be the closest thing to a standard right now, hopefully Amazon will support it at some point.