Is Apple the new Big Brother?

I was reading a bit about the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch, all of which use the same OS, and I came across a particularly disturbing passage.

“With the release of the iPad the iPhone OS’s closed and proprietary nature has garnered criticism, particularly by digital rights advocates such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, computer engineer and activist Brewster Kahle, Internet-law specialist Jonathan Zittrain, and the Free Software Foundation who protested the iPad’s introductory event and have targeted the iPad with their “Defective by Design” campaign. Competitor Microsoft, via a PR spokesman, has also criticized Apple’s control over its platform.”

Quite a list! If you can irk the EFF, you must be restrictive, and it seems to me that when Microsoft complains about monolithic control, there is an issue as well.

”At issue are restrictions imposed by the iPad’s design, namely DRM intended to lock purchased media to Apple’s platform, the development model (requiring a yearly subscription to develop for the iPad), the centralized approval process for apps, as well as Apple’s general control and lockdown of the platform itself. Particularly at issue is the ability for Apple (or any other authority that can persuade Apple) to remotely disable or delete apps, media, or data on the iPad at will.”

Ummm… Apple can do anything they want to my device at will? Me no likey!

Is it just me or is this a bad thing?