The Plenitude of Arboreal Beauty

I recently bought a shiny new iPhone 3G and I feel very torn about my decision.

Reasons to buy an iPhone:

• The iPhone data plan is competitively priced among smartphones.
• I needed to buy a new phone and to get off my family’s account.
• Email and web browsing on the iPhone are superb.
• The AppStore is drawing amazingly high-quality applications, many of which cost nothing.
• Android handsets are still a ways off, and I need something more reliable and ready for heavy use than the Neo Freerunner.
• I’m an Apple shareholder.

Reasons to feel bad about it:

• It’s loaded with proprietary software.
• As far as I know, I have to jailbreak it to get it to talk to Linux.
• iPhone developers seem to emulate Apple for the most part; they tend to develop non-Free software.
• Miguel de Icaza, someone I admire so tremendously, might classify me as a “do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do advocate which will praise and preach open source, freedom, open systems, open standards but yet always ends up using the latest-and-greatest proprietary, DRM-enabled, crypto-locked gadgets and software;” although perhaps I don’t need to forfeit my mainstream advocate card.
  (Wow, I felt really crappy as I wrote that. I should have done this exercise before making any purchases.)

Dubious excuses I’ve made to justify buying the iPhone:

• I’m going to install Android/the OpenMoko stack on it.
• I can learn things from the iPhone that will help me make better free software for free phones.

Are you a free software user who also owns an iPhone or other “latest-and-greatest proprietary, DRM-enabled, crypto-locked gadget?” How do you sleep at night? Would encouraging free software apps to be brought to the iPhone be self-defeating? How do we find a balance between dogmatically ignoring non-free software and occasionally tasting the forbidden fruit to satisfy our curiosity and to learn from it?

iNsecurity

On a separate but related note, while waiting in line at the Apple store, iPhone buyers were egged, and later called “fucking faggots” by passers-by, among many other taunts and teases. What is it about Apple that American males find so threatening? I’ve noticed on many occasions that when Apple is brought up, some men will start to act very macho, raising their voices and aggressively insisting that they do not use Apple products. Two guys in line behind me were asked by some girls why they were buying an iPhone, and they said they liked the iPhone because it was well designed and very cool. When asked if they used Macs, they yelled “NO!” and laughed nervously, suggesting that Macs were only for girls (earlier, I asked the same two guys if they were Mac users and they said “yes”…).