Plenty of news agents refuse to stock pornography.

And everyone has some sort of political limit . . . i.e. you wouldn't want to see child abuse or terrorist apps.

And regardless of any app restrictions, I can still use Safari to go to the Wikilieaks site or anywhere else.

no one buys an ipad thinking its an open system, nothings really changed since the birth of the IT age

It's just the publication to other people that's not open, not the actual development. I can develop my own iOS app that does absolutely anything and install it on my own iPhone or iPad. Slight moot point, I know.

Pornography is up for debate - but Apple actively censors the apps they sell. E.g. it's "illegal" to publish word games that contain vulgar language in their dictionary.

I think it's simply wrong to defend such practices.

Pornography is legal. Child abuse and terrorism isn't

the analogy with the games console is a good one, I owned a games company at the time the game cube, dreamcast, and ps came out, the quality control on the cube and dreamcast was terrible, hundreds of terrible games where released, really really terrible games, sure some gems came out but they got totally lost, and both consoles failed.

at the end of the day its apples system, apples os and apples store, they can do whatever they please, don't like it, don't buy an apple product

Not so sure about that. Right now, Apple has a monopoly on the tablet market and is threading on very thin ice in terms of anti-trust law violations etc.
The issue with the iPhone has solved itself, since they lost their dominating position.

If Apple somehow pulls it off to maintain the market share they have in the tablet market, an anti-trust lawsuit is going to hit them sooner or later.

I consider most of these arguments to be pretty academic given the ease with which you can jailbreak and install whatever you want, because once you've jailbroken your Apple product, there is a parallel App store full of contraband goodies

Right, by jailbreaking, you can potentially overcome the limitations and load up all the crap you desire. For quality apps, you can still go with sanctioned apps. Assuming jalibreaking does not void warranty or penalize your ability to download apps.

It would be silly for Apple to base their iPad revenue solely on the hardware sold. The goldmine is in the micro-charges for app sales. This is the revenue model they need to capitalize on.

which it does (at least it voids your warranty if the jailbreak is still installed at the time you have to hand your iDevice to Apple for a repair)

It is quite easily reversed with a restore and if you can't restore then your device is bricked and Apple will never know.

Jailbreaking is much easier than rooting IMO

the one-click-root is pretty easy to use :-)

But yes, I agree - jailbreaking is probably a good way to increase the versatility of iDevices

The wierd thing about this is why would anyone bother to buy an iPad when they don't want Apple products and the Apple experience? That is what the knock-offs are for. I'm sure the Android tablets would also be cheaper, no?

"knock-offs" - such as the iPad, you mean? Apple has hardly invented the tablet.

http://video.teamcoco.com/video/conan.jsp?oid=245467

that pretty much sums it up for me :-)

Hello,

Do you know when will be possible to buy the iPad 2 in Switzerland? And where is possible to book it?

Can anyone explain how it works thie 3G? you need a contract with a phone company or how you use it?

an apple store maybe reports say end of march

you need a micro sim card, just plug it in, can be contract or pay as you go.

you cannot make calls with the ipad (except facetime video calls), you can only use the 3g for data (unless you jailbreak it)

I use my iPad with Skype and a regular iPhone mic/earphone and it works perfectly over wifi. Since Skype also (now) works via 3G, it should also work fine whilst you're out and about.

ok, but the data contract or pay as you go has to be with a telephone provider, no? Sunrise or orange?

ah yes forgot about skype ok what I meant is you can't use it as mobile phone eg to make a call over the normal phone network.