Is the iPhone Bad for Computer Science?

This article asks some great questions.  Is the closed system of the iPhone bad for Computer Science?  I guess it depends on how you look at it.  My students really enjoy writing phone apps and the iPhone has only increased their interest.  Yeah, it would cool to tinker more with the iPhone system without having to “jail-break” the phone as they say, but writing apps for a few bucks creates quite a bit of interest as well.  I see this iPhone situation as being similar to working on your automobiles before computer controls took over.  Back in the day, you could pop the hood and get a few wrenches and start tearing your engine apart.  This was once no big deal.  Now, you have to have a degree in Computer Science to deal with the high tech computer systems under the hood or you might cause the reactor to melt down.  Today, to beef up your engine, you have to buy a book and figure out how to overclock your car engine so to speak with chips and such.  Sounds an awful lot like a Computer Science problem.  I think the iPhone situation is similar as well.   The more high tech the gadget, the more high tech the tinkers have to become or they will just tinker on something else.

That is just my 10 cents!                                 the 10 is in binary