Jason Calacanis' Case vs Apple Foretells Case vs President Obama

I read Jason's post-email regarding his case against Apple in 5 Parts and before I go through my thoughts quickly, all I kept thinking about is, is this the type of long term buyer's remorse a lot of Independents will have when it comes to their Obama vote?  Jason's rant for the most part is a lot of buyer's remorse and changed expectations from someone who has spent a ton of money and time engrossed with Apple's products as well as competitor's products,  So, I can't help but think is President Obama the Steve Jobs of Presidents?  Let's take a look at Jason's 5 points, my thoughts on his Apple points, and why it reminds me of President Obama.

1. Destroying MP3 through anti-competitive prices - Basically Jason rants, since Apple doesn't allow other MP3 players to hook into iTunes they are uncompetitive.  Jason wrote this classic line which reminds me of President Bush-President Obama; imagine if President Bush had asked people to report "fishy" emails to the White House like President Obama did?  Where is the outrage from main street media: 

   Why, then, does Steve Jobs get a pass?Steve Jobs gets a pass because we are all enabling him to be a jerk. We buy the products and we say nothing when our rights are stripped away. We’ve been seduced by Steve Jobs: he lifts another shiny object over his head with a new eco-friendly feature and we all melt like screaming schoolgirls at Shea Stadium in ‘65.

2. Monopolistic practices in telecommunications -  Basically the argument that the iPhone only works on AT&T's network and while I personally don't like that, I don't think this is anti-competitive.   Now this isn't an easy to stretch to Obama, but what reminds me of Obama is the logic that a few people in Washington know more than the people out in the real world.  That's basically the logic around Obama's spending plan which has NOT don't anything to stimulate job growth and is in fact, woefully behind their own forecasts.  Even when a seemingly good # comes out which is then debunked, they still tell you our way is working great.  You try and tell them no, that's not right and you're called unAmerican.
3. Draconian App Store Policies - Basically every application has to be approved by Apple.  I don't have any problem with that because well it is their store and there are ways around this, but he does make a good argument.  Again it reminds me of Obamacare and the mandated use of exchanges to only allow health insurance plans that conform to Government minimum requirements (as of right now your current health plan can be grandfathered until a change is made)
4. Being a Horrible Hypocrite by banning other browsers - Jason is 100% correct here and Apple should allow other browsers to be used.  He wrote this paragraph which again reminds me of Obama's no vote against Justice Roberts but when Republicans voted against Sotomayer they get ridiculed - i.e. Obama being a hypocrite when it comes to a supreme court confirmation.  Apple was more than willing to pile on after Microsoft’s disasterous inclusion of Internet Explorer with Windows. In fact, what Apple is doing is 100x worse than what Microsoft did. You see, Microsoft simply included their browser in Windows, still allowing other browsers to be installed. In Apple’s case, they are not only bundling their browser with the iPhone, but they are BLOCKING other browsers from being installed.
5. Blocking the Google Voice Application - same as #3 above but he does write this which reminds me of President Obama deciding which businesses and industries are too big to fail and instead of letting the free market decide he extends plans like cash for clunkers.  Let people have three or four phone services coming in to their iPhones and perhaps charge a modest licensing fee for those types of service. Or, just simply stop being jerks and let the free market decide how to use the data services they’ve BOUGHT AND PAID FOR. That’s the joke of this: you’re paying for the data services that Apple is blocking. You pay for the bandwidth and Apple doesn’t let you use it because, you know, they know better than you how you should consume your data minutes.

Anyway, I thought whether you agreed with it or not, Jason's post was very insightful.  I personally found it very foretelling of the buyer's remorse Independent voters may have if all of these Washington knows best programs don't do what is advertised.

PardonMyFrench,

Eric