Interesting question!

I've been reading recently of all the apps that are getting the axe from apple, and I've been reading all the commentaries on sites like Engadget and I can say with certainty that this is yet one more reason why I stay away from the iPhone.

Many defenders of Apple's actions either use incorrect logic or write off apple's action as something normal for a phone. People who use incorrect facts claim that it's apple's prerogative to protect their source of revenue because they created xyz - in the case of the podcaster application it was that Apple created and hosts all podcasts. What? really? Is this what you believe? Apple neither created podcasts, nor hosts them!

In the case of 'the iPhone is just a phone and you can't run whatever you like on your Moto RAZR"...well, no. Apple is positing the iPhone as a smartphone for the rest of us. Smartphones, no matter what brand - symbian, palm, windows, blackberry, have a wealth of apps and their distribution is not controlled by the maker of the device.

I can get a lot of apps for my Nokia N80, just as I could for my HTC Blue Angel. Neither Nokia nor Microsoft could tell me what to run on my device, and they could not tell their devs what not to make for those phones.

Now what IF apple took the same stance with the MacOS as they do with the iPhone? Well - quite simple, we would all pretty much give Apple the finger and tell them off. Application of value would be few and far between.

We would not have great applications like Rapidweaver because those would "replicate" the features of iWeb.

We would not have MailPlane because those features "replicate" the features of Mail.

We would not have Textmate because textmate "replicates" the features of SimpleText.

We would not have Transmission because that would be a bandwidth hog.

We wouldn't have open source apps, or apps ported over from Linux because those would violate the NDA agreements.

In other words, what we love about the Mac would cease to exist.

It's time for Apple to stop stifling the iPhone and the iPod Touch and it's time to let the Mac community do what they do best - support the platform!