I don't believe they are comparable. The situation, the products and competition are all different. And I really don't think they failed the first time, they ma

I don't believe they are comparable. The situation, the products and competition are all different. And I really don't think they failed the first time, they may have lost of to the PCs then but they didn't perish as a company. Their philosophy has been to create a great product and sell it in one package. And it has worked pretty good for them with Mac line of products. With the app store model they still get to control the applications that run on the iPhone. Which does give them the ability to not approve any application that would make the user experience with the device undesirable. This control over the app store is being used for tactical reasons by Apple. But obviously whether it was intended reason from the get go, I highly doubt that. Add to this who knows what legal agreements they are bound by with the Carrier. The carrier may say it wasn't us but when things go bad between them I am pretty certain there will be a few people in both these companies looking at those legal agreements. Whether this is a good thing for developers, no. Whether it is good for Apple, may be in short term but probably not in long term. A more open policy with the approval process would be ideal.