I also agree with your conclusion — vendor lock-in is enough of a problem that I’m glad we have people with big megaphones talking about it, but unfortunately, too many of those megaphone-wielders exaggerate their cases.

There are a number of reasons that PCs became the standard and Macs remained a niche item, but one of the most important factors was that the hardware was pretty much open on PCs from the get-go. This allowed market forces to work, and more people opted for flexibility, which in turn spurred competition and knocked down the prices. So, if you wanted a Mac because you appreciated its superior [fill in pet feature here], you accepted the proprietary nature of the machine as the price to pay for increased quality. Mac had a second chance to win market share when they made the smart decision to base OS X on Unix — I was one of many who bought a Mac in response. Then they made a series of dumb decisions and broke a lot of the Unix goodness. I won’t buy another Mac, consequently.

I expect the same thing will happen with next-gen smart phones — some people will stick with the iPhone because they like its snazziness, others will opt for a different phone, whether because its hackable, cheaper, supports more telco services, or whatever.

Curious to hear more about this statement:

Then they made a series of dumb decisions and broke a lot of the Unix goodness.

As for breaking Unix, I’ve forgotten a lot of the specifics — the reading I was doing a year or two ago convinced me to abandon the idea of a Unix box with a nice UI. The things I remember include messing with the file system, messing with permission bits, making changes to Unix source code that are not given back to the community (and/or introducing bugs that no one else will be able to look at), and (related) closing down the OpenDarwin initiative.

Here, here, and here are some examples.

Less specific, but captures the mood: here, here and here.

I don’t disagree with any of the criticisms in the O’Reilly article either, and I would have a few to add to this list (PT_DENY_ATTACH!), but neither these nor the HFS+ problems are overwhelming, particularly given the other major goodness of OS X as a whole. YMMV of course.

I’ve thought a good deal about Mark Pilgrim’s exodus to Ubuntu, and specifically about the freedom concerns. As I stated previously, I share these concerns, but put my main priority on need for Free Data. As long as I can get my data out of my OS X and put it elsewhere, I don’t feel the imperative to demand Free Software as well. Which is not to say I don’t support Free Software; by analogy I support public transport and use it when I can, and yet I still own a car. I understand those who find this position to be a conflict of principles.

(Ignoring the iPod Touch which may approximate an unlocked iPhone for some classes of user…)

Maybe ipods as well, if you can’t use them with any online store (or at least if it looks like Apple are trying to make it difficult for the ipod to inter-operate with other stores). The iPod would be locking you into the music vendor.