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I'll never understand why you have to own a mac in order to develop iPhone apps

It's not difficult to understand: the iPhone is based on a version of OS X, so when Apple came to write the developer tools, they extended the OS X developer tools. These, unsurprisingly, are OS X native.

You may not agree with it, but it's not incomprehensible.

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Android (linux-based): Linux, Mac & Windows free SDK

Palm WebOS (linux-based): Mojo seems to be Linux, Mac & Windows

Blackberry: MDS is an Eclipse plugin, so Linux, Mac & Windows

Apple and Microsoft are the only ones to lock you onto one platform. Despite all the marketing dollars invested in showing how different Apple and Microsoft are, I see them apply the exact same strategies for the same purposes every single time they get the chance.

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