Android has a root user, of course, but the person controlling the touch screen doesn't need to be root. So if the device manufacturer doesn't want you to control your own property, they can ensure that.

Archos does this with their Archos 5 with Android tablet. They think they are Apple and are going to one day have a movie store, so for DRM reasons, you are locked out of your own device. They also won't release any documentation on how to program the DSP, so you can't replace the horribly broken media player software they include.

So basically, Android will not save you. The company needs to not be on a power trip, and they need to care about openness. It unfortunately seems that any company that can afford to design nice hardware is unable to hire anyone with a clue about software, so my guess is that this will never happen.

It's too bad, too, because the Archos 5 is an amazingly good piece of hardware. It just has buggy software that I could be fixing instead of whining about here!

I remember being surprised when I first figured out that Apple didn't really bother with license keys for upgrades to OS X, and academic upgrades are free or have hardly any license fees. I was also surprised when the Intel version wouldn't run on non-Apple hardware, when they could easily have sold it for use on Dell boxes. It was explained to me that Apple is a hardware company. They want to make a great operating system and great applications so you will buy more of their hardware. It was the first example I saw of software selling the hardware, where generally the two were sold separately.

Mobile devices has always been a little different. The hardware is very different from device to device and screen realestate is precious, so each handset has its own software. Some might argue that the reason many mobile phones have crappy software is because the companies are hardware companies tacking on some software, but it's always been that the software and the hardware are sold together and are under heavy constraints.

Until recently. Now we have much more powerful devices in our pockets and our purses. When your "phone" can run a browser, email, games, and media player, you can start thinking about what other software you could run. We have enough power and flexible inputs such that we can handle the overhead of generic software. Suddenly there's the opportunity for phone hardware and software to become separate markets.

It would if it there wasn't the rise of media stores and DRM. To have good DRM you have to own the whole device. To sell the media producers on digital distribution you have to have DRM.

I think that the popularity of these media stores (ebooks, movies, music) is the largest reason why we won't have root access to our (semi-)mobile devices any time soon.

And that's why I think iTunes is locking me out of my tablets.