Also worth a read: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3790#more-3790
But the Mac also set a negative pattern that Jobs was to repeat with greater amplification later in his life. In two respects; first, it was a slick repackaging of design ideas from an engineering tradition that long predated Jobs (in this case, going back to the pioneering Xerox PARC WIMP interfaces of the early 1970s). Which would be fine, except that Jobs created a myth that arrogated that innovation to himself and threw the actual pioneers down the memory hole.
Second, even while Jobs was posing as a hip liberator from the empire of the beige box, he was in fact creating a hardware and software system so controlling and locked down that the case couldn't even be opened without a special cracking tool. The myth was freedom, but the reality was Jobs's way or the highway. Such was Jobs's genius as a marketer that he was able to spin that contradiction as a kind of artistic integrity, and gain praise for it when he should have been slammed for hypocrisy.
No offence to Jobs himself of course, but what is funny however is that Apple and their ex-mascot have got you wrapped around their finger haven't they? You are just like the others. Blindly licking every bit of their crap they release, celebrating their figurehead like a god, living in what is rather futile and pathetic existence if you didn't have those two to comfort you. Tribes, even of though they are facing extinction (in a manner of speaking) nowadays, have more manners, sophistication and most certainly consideration than you.
This is an unavoidable consequence of supporting many different hardware platforms and allowing manufacturers to modify the OS at a hardware level. This will always mean that the iPhone experience will be less trouble free - which I gather is the point, but buy which one suits your needs, it's good that there's a choice.
