Daniel Eran Dilger:

“True, it’s fun to play couch-communist as Calacanis does, insisting that companies should give away their products for you to try first, or insisting that some aspect of their business model should be changed. It’s fine for Calacanis to express his opinions, however poorly informed they may be. And they are very poorly informed, with little understanding of how technology works and clearly even less incisive about how businesses and laws and contracts work.

But it’s another ball of wax to insist that Apple should be taken over and its management replaced by a supreme soviet of open source wonks that prance around handing out free gifts to users while competitors seek to destroy the company using more predatory and closed products than Apple itself, and positioning the whole tirade as a moral high ground.

Does Calacanis seriously think Apple has some impossible hold over the tech industry the way Microsoft has since the late 80s? There is vibrant competition in smartphones, not in spite of Apple’s unique innovations, but because of it. Calacanis cites fellow complainers, including TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington and Engadget’s Peter Rojas, both of whom have vocally given up the iPhone for similarly ideological reasons. Which is fine, as long as their competitor-supported theatrics are seen as such and not portrayed as some moral high ground related to real issues.”

Calcacanis did go off on the deep end.