I’m an Apple user too, and it seems to me that a jailbroken iPhone is vastly superior to Apple’s “official” device. Likewise, Rockbox gives “regular” iPods additional functionality that frankly should have been there in the first place.

But not only is Apple falling behind the work of 3rd-party devs, it’s actively shutting them out of their ecosystem. I would never buy a desktop Mac if I could ONLY run Apple apps — why should a mobile computer be any different?

The opinions you have expressed are very different than those of many other people. But opinions can be more universal when they are based on reality.

Each of your opinions on Apple’s advertising, iPhone SDK, App Store, and hardware, imply that Apple is doing everything wrong in these areas.

The reality though, shows the opposite:

Apple’s advertising has won awards and most people find them informative and entertaining.

The iPhone NDA is no different than other software company NDAs (including Microsoft’s) and the developer program has attracted hundreds of new programmers to the platform.

The App Store has thousands of applications, Apple sold it’s first million apps in the first week, and some developers are getting very rich because of the App Store (one developer has already made $250,000).

As for Apple’s hardware, Apple has won many design awards, and the reality is that sales of all Apple’s products (Desktops, notebooks, iPods, iPhones) have been growing at incredible rates while all other manufacturers are struggling.

So with all these facts in mind, it’s very difficult to take your opinions as being relevant.

Fact: Less than 20 apps have been rejected out of 4000.
Fact: Developing for the other mobile platforms like Palm, WinMobile and RIM is still way more complicated, expensive and LESS lucrative! That tends to discourage developers more than a few over-hyped rejections.
Fact: One lone developer already made $250K in TWO MONTHS! $250,000 in 60 days for one $4.99 game. Call me when someone on the Google Market makes that much money in that short of time. That’s the kind of story that gets developers all giddy, no matter how many rejections might have happened.
Fact: X-Plane was ported to the iPhone in less than two weeks and is now in the top 10. Again, call me when that kind of sophisticated stuff show up on any other mobile phone.
Fact: In 60 days Apple has had 100 million downloads and has averaged $1 million per day in revenue! That is double the rate of the original iTunes store with a much smaller potential customer base. Remember these apps are only good for the iPhone and iPod touch.

Now, should Apple be more explicit with their guidelines and give better explanations to their developers? Absolutely! Does the application of the NDA to rejection letters seem petty and stupid? Yes! But in the mean time, it’s not going to make one whit of difference. The App store is a gold mine for Apple and developers and no one else has anything like it.

Developers should however, exercise a little common sense and realize that Apple is not going to let them make an end-run around iTunes, Mail, Calendar, Safari or Address book unless you are bowling partners with Steve Jobs or you have a multibillion dollar software machine like Exchange or SAP or Oracle.

If Google had shown up a year ago, that might have been a problem, but the App store has now set the agenda for everybody else.