With all of the discussion of the benefits and drawbacks of applying the iPhone OS to more general-purpose computing tasks, this is one aspect that’s easy to overlook at the beginning: software competition evaporates for anything already done by an Apple app. It’s an acceptable trade-off for a smartphone, but is it healthy for anyone if all possibilities vanish for alternative native web browsers, email clients, media players, media storefronts, calendars, and contact managers? And Apple’s apps span a wider range than just the iPhone’s “big four” bottom-row apps that have been forbidden to duplicate so far. How far will Apple’s “duplicates existing functionality” policy go as their App-Store-locked platforms are used for more general computing tasks?
