Ethics is a county of England where the girls wear Eva Glass slippers
In an interview with the New York Times, Jobs said that the iPhone was not a computer and besides Apple's partner,
Cingular AT&T didn't want its network bought down by rogue third party applications.
Mind you, the network probably wants to ban third-party applications more because it would mean iPhone users would connect to Skype and not use its wonderful service.
Meanwhile Jobs admits that he wants to control every cough and spit that ends up on the iPhone. This includes things like ringtones.
While many outfits like to pretend that they emphasis user freedom, Jobs tells the Times categorically that he will define everything that is on the phone and not those pesky customers. He told users that Apple did not want the phone to be like a PC and that the last thing it wants is to have loaded software on the phone and find the phone does not work.
Interestingly enough, he said that this lack of user control was taken from the iPod concept and is probably the first time that Jobs has admitted that he insists his users do as they are told. Fortunately for him they do.
His argument that the iPhone is a device that needs to work and you can't do that if you load software onto it willy-nilly. Well software which does not come from Apple at least. Jobs seems to be clearing the iway to make a killing on applications that only Steve wants on 'his' machine that 'you' buy.
You can read the full interview here. µ