I've had a change of heart about the iPhone lately. Last year I blogged about why I didn't like my iPhone. Since then I've continued to express my frustration about the closed and often limited system that is the iPhone. But I've realized one thing: it works.

Many computer users (me included) bemoan the fact that there are limitations on the iPhone that you don't have on other phones. But this has not hurt the iPhone in becoming the most popular phone in the US. Why? My thought is that people don't really want freedom to do WHATEVER they want. Instead they want to do things with ease. There's a user experience on the iPhone that you don't get with other phones. Others have tried to mimic and/or improve on it, but it continues to bring in new subscribers for AT&T hand over fist. It's this user experience that Apple tries so hard to protect with all of its products. You have to admit that there's almost an aura of cool with Apple products that extends beyond that exterior combination of brushed aluminum and white plastic. But if that were it, people would have seen through that veil from the beginning and killed it off right away just like the many iPhone wannabes that have come along. It's this well thought-out software that allows someone to pick up an iPhone and instantly know how to use it. And maybe it's this experience that causes people to buy into the System, paying $70 a month for a single cell phone plan.

When I look at the iPhone and consider the limitations through the perspective of Apple wanting to preserve the iPhone aura, these limitations don't seem like limitations anymore. If Apple allowed anyone to install any program from anywhere on their phone, some of us might have phones that were buggy, crashed all the time, and have poor battery life. In fact, Carolyn used to have an HTC Fuze smartphone which was much more powerful than her current iPhone 3G. This thing had a sliding keyboard, fancy interface, and you could install anything on its Windows Mobile operating system. Software freedom indeed. Carolyn hated it. Things would slow to a crawl, her phone would crash and she complained nonstop about it. I had to research different websites to find various "fixes" and patches for it. The phone ended up going on eBay and Carolyn ended up getting an iPhone, which she now loves.

Because Apple has set up a single download source for apps, with a strict approval system that roots out the weeds, there's not a big need to worry about viruses or software not being compatible with your system. The App Store is not without controversy and there have been several app rejections that I strongly don't agree with, but this lack of "freedom" makes some things easier. Steve Jobs has stated that this control has given the user freedom from other things, one of which is freedom from porn. While some will undoubtedly argue against that, for me as a soon-to-be parent the porn restriction is most definitely reassuring.

Don't get me wrong here, I'm not an Apple fanboy and I still have things that I wish the iPhone could do, but the things that I can do on the phone are implemented intuitively for relative ease of use. For that I might be apt to live with some "restrictions". A phone doesn't need to do everything. It just needs to do some things really well.