I find the entire app store concept -- from the corporate/control side -- very weird. They make and control the hardware, and now they restrict which software can and cannot be installed. It's as if I bought a car but was only allowed to drive on roads with 4 lanes or more.
-zridling
+100 & 100% agreed~!
I write both free and commercial software. Commercial software puts food on the table. I like that a lot because I get hungry every day~!
I also put out free software, both freeware and "use & abuse" software.
But when it comes to being restricted to what kind of software I can download, install, and run on MY hardware (when you sell it to me, it becomes MINE!!!), then I have a very real problem.
I believe the root of the problem is patent, copyright, and intellectual property laws that have gone very far off into some very dangerous territory, compounded with corporate agency (which is duty-bound to be psychotic -- quite literally, that isn't figurative) that pursues profit at any expense. Companies are abusing laws and basically raping their customers on one side, while on the other they pretend to be "good" by doing some inane "community service" to distract people from their basic psychosis.
I suppose that we have this general feeling that markets should be essentially free (with certain exceptions for dangerous goods like chemicals, weapons, etc.), with anybody being able to participate. The iTunes app store flies in the face of that with Apple controlling everything from the developer toolchain to what software gets listed in the store. i.e. You are not free to participate in the iTunes store because you require the approval of Apple, which is completely arbitrary.
This just doesn't sit well with me, and I suspect that this doesn't sit well with most people here.
To put things in a more concrete perspective, if mouser wanted to put some software in the store so that DC people could download it to their iPhones, there's no guarantee there that he would be able to, no matter how he tried and with no relevance to his competence or ability. Apple's decisions are arbitrary and binding. i.e. You would not be allowed by Apple to install software on your iPhone that mouser wrote for you, and you would have no way to install it; it's locked.
How does this benefit you? Short answer: it doesn't.
I believe that being able to run any software I want is a very basic right I have for my own hardware. I don't think that's unreasonable.
Oh... 1 last rant...
All security arguments for restricted hardware/software/closed app stores are fallacies. No security argument can be valid there. i.e. All arguments for security at the expense of basic freedoms are fallacies. (All arguments for security imply increased control/power for some purpose/to some end. -- AND -- No argument that implies increased control/power/restrictions can not affect freedom. -- AND -- All restrictions on freedom are undesirable. [I'm skipping a few steps in logic here.])
I lied... 1 more rant...
We have a basic problem where the vast majority of people are horribly uneducated on the topic of freedom, and massively undereducated when it comes to computing. My uncle told me that he knows how to turn a computer on and off, and that's it. I honestly doubt that he knows how to turn a computer off properly... There are a lot more people out there like that. They make up the marketplace and drive it. It would be remiss to allow the uneducated masses to drive us all off a cliff. I would love to see a "Consumer Electronics Freedom Protection Act".
Ok. No more rants. These kinds of topics really just set me off.
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I actually wish that they were more into the mainstream. The funky domains were to point out that they are not quite at the front line yet -- in the case of a crisis, they will be though. 
