Nice, we have a discussion going. Karma be damned. :)
Your comment that companies are there to make a profit is a truism that vastly oversimplifies the topic. Yes, both MS and Apple are there to make a profit, but their strategies for doing so differ enormously. To think that because one company would do something to make a profit, another company would do it is mistaken. Especially if you think Apple would do something just because MS looks to be making steps in that direction.
I mentioned MS's new Windows 8 to show that a unified interface is indeed possible or at least plausible across many types of devices. In your previous post you argued against that because of the widely different input methods, sensors, etc. This is not where my profits argument comes in. I will get into that later.
Apple hasn't risen from near bankruptcy 15 years ago to being the biggest tech company now by simply snatching at every opportunity to make a buck. They've done it because Jobs goal is to create the very best designed products. In the correct belief that that's what people want to buy.
It's exactly the same way that Apple got it's earlier market in DTP. Not because Apple decided that a future DTP market would be worth lots of money and so they pursued it. But rather because Jobs had a background in Calligraphy, and he thought the then standard fixed pitch dot-matrix fonts were awful, so he pioneered proper font handling in the OS. It was a design decision, not a business decision that made their DTP market.
A few years ago I would have completely agreed with you. Apple had and still has some amazing products. The iPhone 4, iPad 2, MacBook Air, MacBook Pro are absolutely gorgeous products, with amazing industrial design. They just scream quality when compared to my cheap Acer laptop or subsidized HTC Desire phone. The amount of features or the costs are a whole different debate, and please let's not go down that route.
So Apple are undoubtedly innovators, and the ease of use of their products, beautiful hardware and software interfaces made existing markets flourish or created completely new markets. There were mp3 players before the iPod, there were smartphones before the iPhone, and there were tablets before the iPad. But the relatively inexpensive devices in these categories sucked, while the good ones cost enormous amounts. I do think it took Apple to show other companies what a sleek interface is supposed to look like, what a good form factor is, what hardware and software features are important.
Likewise, iTunes and the App Store didn't come from a business decision to take a cut from media transactions. They came from design decisions to make things easier for users. Downloading a song from a website, putting the file in an appropriate place in the file system, and transferring it to a MP3 player was more hassle or too complicated for most people to do. Apple designed a complete integrated system to make that easy.
This is where our opinions start to differ. I agree at first iTunes and the App Store started out as means of making things easier for their users. But at some point Apple realized they are a HUGE revenue source. On the consumer end, keeping things locked down on as many different devices as possible protects this revenue. Why else would they revert jailbroken devices with every single OS update? It is pretty clear that the owner of the jailbroken iPhone meant to do it, and wanted it to stay that way. Why can't other applications interface with the iTunes Store if the ultimate purpose is to sell music or movies? Then want to control the entire distribution chain, from the device, software all the way to the server.
If ease of use were the only criterion, they could keep the vertically integrated Apple way of doing things for novice users, while allowing alternatives for advanced users. If something were to go wrong with the alternatives, it would not be solely the fault of those users who decided to step outside of the Apple way. For instance ship the iPhone with a default locked down OS, but give the users the option to jailbreak them through some advanced settings options with giant messages of "WARNING! Dragons ahead!" (I kid you not, that's what Cyanogen tells me in its Performance settings).
On the business end, the lockdown means there will never be a competing App Store that would undercut them. And whoever wants to distribute apps, music or movies to iDevices HAS to go to Apple and agree to whatever terms Apple imposes. Look up the changes in the App Store policy, every one is designed to favour Apple and close loopholes that prevent Apple from taking their 30% cut.
The incentive was never to control. To this day, with iTunes you can still rip your own tracks from CD, import songs in a number of formats. You can download from a website exactly as you could before iTunes store came along. The iTunes store is an addition to the facilities available, not a replacement. Additionally, against the argument that Apple wants to tightly control consumers is the fact that Apple pushed the record companies to allow them to put out songs without DRM.
As I said, maybe at first the incentive was never to control, but I strongly believe it has become that way. And the iOS is the perfect platform to achieve that control since it was locked down from the very start. That is why it will be pushed upwards on more devices, including possibly MacBooks and iMacs. Implementing such limitations on OSX will not happen, because people will take notice and they will complain. And most creative types that seem to prefer OSX will eventually leave in much larger numbers than those few who left because of the Final Cut Pro X debacle.
I realize if you are an Apple consumer this is not a pleasant pill to swallow, but please do not discount my arguments outright like many fanbois do. Given Apples enormous influence on the computing industry, such a path is bad for all of us because it lowers the common denominator of what we can and cannot do with our hardware, when and how we can purchase out entertainment, etc.
