I'm writing this column from Seoul, the capital city of the most wired nation on the planet, based on per capita penetration of broadband internet to the home. And while this isn't usually a tech column, you'll hopefully forgive me for discussing geek stuff for the second time in a row. So much news has been swirling around (and so few good movies or albums) that what I laughingly like to refer to as 'my mind' has remained fixated on this.

First we had the drama of watching Jerry Yang destroy Yahoo, rather than see it purchased (even at a substantial premium) by Microsoft. Of course, just about everyone I know couldn't help but gasp "Oh no!" when Microsoft tendered that offer. Even with most of its glory behind it, Yahoo was such an iconic company in Silicon Valley that the thought of it being swallowed up by the Dark Lords of Seattle was the stuff of nightmares. If it had put as much thought into its products as they had put into staying out of Steve Ballmer's clutches, perhaps they wouldn't have found themselves in this predicament in the first place. And now, with their valuation reduced by billions of dollars, it's been forced to outsource its advertising business to Google and has become a target for Carl Icahn. And the exodus of top management is beginning to resemble a stampede. From the frying pan into the fire, indeed.

Among other things, it just goes to show the mass perception of Microsoft, a company that hasn't managed to do much of anything right so far this century. The latest version of their Windows operating system, Vista, has been deemed a failure in most circles. Their internet offerings have ranged from "Me too!" to "Who cares?" Their attempt to go head-to-head against Apple's iPod with their Zune is the punchline to a joke that no one's told. They're running on corporate licences for Office and the various versions of the Xbox. Let's face it - without some stunning bit of innovation, Microsoft could well go the way of Yahoo.

Of course claiming that Microsoft is the only evil entity in software land would be naive. All appearances to the contrary, Apple seems poised to join such ranks, that is if they're not already there. Yes, Apple of the paradigm changing iMac, iPod, iPhone, Apple of those cute 'I'm Windows, I'm a Mac' ads. Appearances to the contrary, Steve Jobs is no Santa Claus. More on this in a bit.

As I browsed in a bookshop recently, a title caught my eye: The Future of the Internet - And How to Stop It by Jonathan Zittrain, the Professor of Internet Governance and Regulation at Oxford University. And as if that title wasn't enough of a mouthful, he's
also co-founder of Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Now I'd like to tell you I've finished the book and that I can report on its predictions and theories. But I only just picked it up and, curiously, my editor says that my column is due when it's due, not when I've finally finished a book. Didn't anyone ever tell him that deadlines are the enemy of innovation?

Be that as it may, I can tell you that Zittrain starts by comparing "dedicated appliances" to what he calls generative technology. Generative technology would be the PC and the internet, both open platforms that can be shaped or molded into a variety of uses that go far beyond what their creators intended. A simple example of a dedicated appliance would be your rice cooker. Modern rice cookers are controlled by microprocessors (computers) but can only do the tasks for which they were designed. You can't reprogram your rice cooker to watch videos (at least not yet).

Another example is Apple's iPhone. As released to the public, you could only buy it from a single source. You couldn't operate any programs on it that were not installed by the manufacturer. And you couldn't use it to browse a large number of web sites that used technologies incompatible with the iPhone's built-in Safari web browser.
What happened next? Thousands of programmers around the world went to work and soon hacked the device, 'jail-breaking' it and unlocking it so that you could use it with any GSM-based mobile phone company and could install hundreds of additional applications.

As we know one year later, the iPhone was one of the most successful product launches in history. Apple sold six million of them. While that number may seem small (1.15 billion mobile phones were sold worldwide in 2007), it was enough for Apple to get a 25% share of the smart phone market in the United States. And it claimed a 0.9% share of web surfing across all devices - 50% higher than Windows Mobile and 9 times higher than Symbian. It attained these numbers despite the fact that, technically speaking, the phone is officially only available in the US and only surfs the web on AT&T's horribly slow EDGE network.

Well, the fact is, the iPhone is available all over the world, and with good reason. I think that with all its limitations, it works better than any other smart phone currently on the market. You might think that Apple would embrace this worldwide community of developers and fanatic users, but that's not quite the case. The new 3G iPhone will be released globally on July 11. We know that in the US, you still have to buy it from AT&T and that it will cost US$200 for the 8-Gb version and US$300 for the 16-Gb, as long as you sign up for a two-year contract. In Italy, where they will sell the phone unlocked, the 16 gig version will retail for 600 Euros. As of this writing, Hutchison's 3, which has the exclusive distribution rights in Hong Kong, has not announced pricing plans. The one thing that is clear is that sales of this new iPhone will take an exponential jump - millions will be sold and the iPhone will be even more ubiquitous than it is today.

The new iPhone offers some enhancements over the old version. Aside from faster web surfing and built-in GPS, Apple's new 'App Store' will be selling thousands of applications. The problem is that you can only add applications bought through this online store. And the store can only sell applications that they have pre-approved. Apple's developer agreement details specific types of applications that CANNOT be developed for the iPhone. All of this is not too different from the iTunes store, in which Apple determines what can and cannot be sold, the format and pricing and which limited set of devices purchased music and movies will work on. Except that you didn’t have to use iTunes to load your iPod. With the iPhone, you won’t have any alternative.

Blame my aging hippie ethics, but I get concerned when someone tries to have this much power, even if the concerns are merely maximizing profit and not attempting some Dr. Evil-style global domination. If I've bought the device, shouldn't I be able to determine how I use it and what provider I use it with? Does this attempt at control put Apple in a similar position to China's attempt to control the internet? Jonathan Zittrain seems to think so.

There are two rays of light though. The first is those thousands of developers who will undoubtedly hack the new version of the iPhone as quickly as they cracked the first. And Google’s Android operating system for mobile phones should start showing up soon and hopefully that will provide a level of competition that neither Blackberry, Windows Mobile or Symbian have been able to muster.

I have to confess, despite everything I've written above, I'll probably buy the new iPhone when it comes out. I really love my old one - I've got about 100 albums' worth of music on it, a video of Led Zeppelin's reunion concert last year and hundreds of photos. It
does everything I want better than any other phone on the market. Faster net surfing will make it more complete for me. And yet I
have to ask, after everything I've written, if I truly believe that Apple is evil and I'm going to buy one anyway, what does that say about me?