I think there is a good reason for Apple wanting to control the applications being created and distributed on iPhone and iPod touch systems. Rubbish! In the last week or so, since I have been using my Palm T/X I have been singularly impressed with good applications, and shocked at the pure Rubbish applications that are available to load into my Palm. Mind you, and remember, that many of these applications are legacy from the Palm’s transition from the Motorola Dragonball processors to ARM/XScale CPU’s. And hence face a hardware hurtle that Apple MAY not have to face. Should Apple transition the current ARM iPhone/iPod’s to Intel, they too will face similar troubles. But returning to the control issue, there would be a bit of control over the quality of application development and a maintenance to well defined API that could mitigate future issues. So Apple can maintain a high level ‘feel good’ factor of the iPhone/iPod experience by requiring quality software development. and I believe that the current ‘jailbreaking’ of the platforms will diminish as more and more applications get deployed.
On a separate note, as I mentioned prior, I am impressed with the broad swath, and functionality of the Palm, and also saddened that Palm has, for all intents and purposes abandoned a platform that was so ahead of it’s time.