I want what the iPhone should have been, and what Android still has a chance of becoming. That is not going to happen if all of us just sit down, shut up, and let Apple take all the marketshare. There absolutely is a PR battle to be fought over this, and I am going to continue to warn people away from walled gardens as long as they will listen, until the only people left in those gardens are their creators.
You need to get over yourself and realize that computing is bigger than just the desires of developers and geeks. What most of those who rail against walled gardens studiously avoid addressing is the simple fact that Apples succeeds by addressing the needs of people who are neglected by traditional computing. To wit:
My 60 yo mother doesn't want what "the iPhone should have been, and what Android still has a chance of being."
She wants to read a book and surf the web. She doesn't want to have to decide whether the Droid version of FBReader will run on her tablet, or wonder why the x86 version of her favourite PopCap game won't run on her ARM tablet either.
She's no fool, but good luck trying to convince her that she's better off in a situation where she needs to know what an ISA is or why it's important, or any of the other things happening in the largely uncontrolled Android market.
Most important, and more to the point: My mother will never research to find out that her program won't run in the background because Adobe hasn't gotten around to updating it's development tools to leverage the new iPhone APIs yet. All she knows is that the shit Apple sold her doesn't work.
Apple will continue to succeed as long as they prioritize the user experience, even if it's to the detriment of developers. There are a lot of non-technical users out there and they have money to spend.
