Some good points were made by all,including "the iPhone is too expensive for what it is", iOS is not as customisable as other Os's, and "iOS is too locked down, I bought the device, it should be my choice what I run on it"...
Then I said something controversal! I said that there are just two types of OS in the world. There are Windows based OS's or Unix based OS's. I then followed this up with the even more controversial statement, that if you count up every electronic item in your house that uses an operating system and made a nice little table, you would find that devices running Unix based OS's outnumber devices running Windows based OS's.
Devices such as a dell laptop (windows 7), and dreamcast games console (windows CE) are windows based. whareas devices such as Mac laptop (OSX), and Playstation games console are Unix based. Some devices run an embedded OS stored on chips instead of discs. I've not done any detailed research to find out what OS my washing machine runs for instance, but these embedded OS's are usually derrived from freely available Unix varients.
OSX arguably the most advanced OS on the market, was itself based on the free verion of BSD called freeBSD, which was itself based on the original Unix.
As a side note, many people don't know what OS their devices are running. I met an extreme Windows fan while on holiday, who insisted that he would never think about using any computer that didn't use windows. I had to point out to him (sorry couldn't resist it) that his phone (a pocket computer after all) was running Android, a mobile version of Unix ;)
So here is a little chart I made showing the devices I have (minus the washing machine), and the type of OS that runs on them. I wonder what other people's charts would look like?
