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I can't imagine any desktop OS vendor locking down the system though.
Mac is the only device left that we could tinker without paying contracts, etc.
Apple realizes that if that were to happen, osx would die. It's probably FUD purported by the anti-apple campaign.
I really hope so. Over the years I got to really like the combination of really nice hardware, friendly GUI, staying-out-of the way system combined with a real Unix in the backend. I wouldn't know what to go to if Apple really were this crazy. Linux comes to mind, but then I would still have to move away from the slick hardware (that just works as opposed to a lot of not-quite-working PC hardware I came accross over…
Linux works pretty well on most Macs, so you could have both. ;-) The main problem is that most Linux GUIs aren't designed for a one-button mouse. You can avoid that somewhat if you map some sort of keystroke to right-click (for some reason, f12 is common), or use a more text-heavy environment.
Yeah, I realize it'd be weird to buy a MacBook just to run xmonad on it, but they really are nice physical machines, as far as laptops go.
I'd actually like to see desktop app stores become popular. We've had them in the Linux world for years, though there's no mechanism for payment. Ninite gets us partway there on Windows, but it's still crude compared to apt. I can't imagine any desktop OS vendor locking down the system though.
In fact looking at http://www.ubuntu.com/partners/ISV it appears as though it's already possible for commercial software to be distributed and updated through Software Update; the only thing that's missing is to add a payment method so that sales could be done that way as well.
Remember when we used to own our computers?
Time to sell my Apple stock and donate the money to a Linux distro.