[jeffcutsinger]

> That said, if you really care about customizability, you can always jailbreak your iPhone ...

* Yes, you can, for now. There are no guarantees this will happen with future versions of iOS.

* If you jailbreak you are forever a fugitive. You can never again just update, you have to wait and make sure it doesn't kill your setup. You can end up losing your warranty, be refused tech support, etc.

* Finally, from a philosophical standpoint, it is absolutely absurd that I should ever have to break something I have paid for to take full ownership of it. I'm OK with the default being locked down, but be like android and give me the checkbox to open up the rest of the world to me (Android devices are certainly not perfect on this front, though).

I agree with the rest of your points. I also have a similar story, but instead of going to OS X, I just started installing Ubuntu and using the defaults without customization. And that's the way I primarily use my devices. I just think it's ridiculous we're even having this discussion about whether people should have full ownership of devices they've paid for.

[aioprisan]

>> Finally, from a philosophical standpoint, it is absolutely absurd that I should ever have to break something I have paid for to take full ownership of it.

Actually, if you buy a phone on contract, you didn't pay the full price and aren't entitled to the same rights as someone who paid the full $650+tax sticker price and gets it SIM-unlocked.

[corresation]

The discussion had nothing to do with being SIM unlocked or not, but rather constraints that remain whether you paid full price up front or not.

However the "on a contract" bit is frequently misrepresented I think: when you get a device on contract, in most cases you are being loaned the cost of the device. You have zero recourse to simply return the device when you decide you don't want it any more. There is little to no difference between buying a phone "outright" on a credit card, or getting it "on contract" with your carrier.

[w0utert]

>> Yes, you can, for now. There are no guarantees this will happen with future versions of iOS.

[..]

>> If you jailbreak you are forever a fugitive. You can never again just update, you have to wait and make sure it doesn't kill your setup. You can end up losing your warranty, be refused tech support, etc

Well, in a sense that's an inherent risk of customizability, a tradeoff you have to make. Home screen customizations are probably perfectly safe on stock Android, but I'm not sure how more intrusive modifications will affect updating Android phones that are heavily skinned by the manufacturer (ie: most of them). Maybe I'm wrong, but I suppose you can forget about applying major updates to a Samsung TouchWiz or HTC Sense phone without either undoing or screwing up all your customizations, or in the worst case even bricking your phone to the point it needs a factory reset. If customization was at the top of my feature list, I wouldn't risk anything but a stock Android device.

>> Finally, from a philosophical standpoint, it is absolutely absurd that I should ever have to break something I have paid for to take full ownership of it.

From a philosophical point of view you can have all kinds of opinions, assertions and beliefs about anything. In reality, what you are calling absurd applies to a very significant majority of products you can buy in stores. You can tune your car, but don't expect the dealer to fix it under warranty. You can modify the OS on your desktop computer, but don't expect Microsoft or Apple to supply patches to the problems you may introduce, or even make sure stock patches don't break your setup. You can make most electronic devices do things they were never designed for, but the risk of breaking them is all on you.

Here on HN, we take customizing hardware and software for granted and think it's only natural to modify it to make it better suit our needs, but I don't think a whole lot of people around here think the same about modifying (for example) their furniture, their clothes, their kitchen appliances, etc. But I'm pretty sure their are lots of people on other websites talking about exactly those kinds of things, people who wouldn't even think about customizing their mobile phone or PC. I realize this is getting a little tangential, but the point here is that if you really want to, you can modify almost anything, but almost always the risk is on you, whether you like it (from a philosophical standpoint or otherwise) or not. I don't see what makes mobile phones so special that you should expect the manufacturer to provide you with the tools to modify them, especially when there are alternatives that allow it out of the box. No-one forces you to use an iPhone ;-)

[jrochkind1]

> Well, in a sense that's an inherent risk of customizability, a tradeoff you have to make.

What? No, it's an inherent risk of customizability that requires violating the companies ToS to achieve.

You really are suggesting that the 'inherent risk' of any kind of customizability is about the same, regardless of whether the vendor intends to support it as a feature, or intends to _prohibit you_ from doing it and does everything they can to prevent it? Really?