I mean, to each his own – but having three steering wheels in my car wouldn't be sufficient incentive to drive something that blasted "SPRINT!" at me every time I opened the door.

Pick the platform you like, by all means, but what you mentioned is more about design decisions than true "openness."

I have an alternative dialler and an Opera browser on my iphone which I downloaded from the App Store.

Quite a few rules have changed on iOS, so both the examples you gave are allowed and available.

For the masses, who buy everything thru the appstore, Apple controls the experience.

But this does not make iOS "closed". You can get whatever widgets you want built using web technologies, and they run like apps.

And if you're a developer, you can put whatever programs you want on your device.

Since all the open advocates should be advocating open source as well, why complain about iOS? IF you want to put open source software on your device, you can just compile it. Apple gives you the development tools for free (the core of which is itself open source) and charges $99 for handling the certificates an authentication for apps.

But you can put any app you want on your iPhone if you're a developer.

IF you're a consumer, you're not capable of compiling apps for your android phone either anyway.

(For some values of "developer" here I'm including enthusiasts who may not really be able to program but are find with compiling code.)

> You can get whatever widgets you want built using web technologies, and they run like apps

You must not know what a widget actually is. Unless there's been some startling update to iOS what you are referring to is nothing like an Android widget.