2.5 years of a closed phone platform is an insidious threat? Where were you for most of the 2000's?
I predict that within 2 years the iPhone OS will allow you to run unapproved apps provided you click through enough, "Hey, we're warning you! Don't come crying to us when you manage to blow up your dock connector", messages.
iPad isn't a phone. iPod Touch isn't a phone. To the degree that these devices are successful, they will be replacing user-programmable devices from the bottom up.
It's all very well for you to "predict that within 2 years" everything will be fine. That's not the way it is today, and it's not the way it has been in the past. Everything I know about Apple tells me they have no love for developers whatsoever, and that their rise is one of the worst things that could happen to this industry in terms of open platforms. Apple likes their monopolies much, much more than MS does.
Something is only user programmable insofar as the user has the capability to program it.
An open device today still wouldn't be user programmable because most people would not have the ability to do so even if they had the desire. For those people (read >95% of the market), functionality and ease of use are so, SO much more important than theoretical freedom.
I predict that within 2 years the iPhone OS will allow you to run unapproved apps provided you click through enough, "Hey, we're warning you! Don't come crying to us when you manage to blow up your dock connector", messages.