I work as a systems engineer for a federal contractor. I used to work a help desk. One thing is certain:
I agree that a walled garden is NOT the right approach to the personal computer market (laptops, desktops)
HOWEVER...
I do realize the complexities of these IT assets. They can be complicated because of the poor support from both the user and the developer in the use of these assets. The work involved in supporting them for people like me makes sense because of their dollar value. That is not the case for a "smart" phone. There is nothing I hate more than having to "support" a phone's app because some loon billed out an app that a customer of mine wants to use only to find that the QC is amature at best.
For all the things people have poo poo'ed on with the "Walled Garden" approach I feel like the QC is better. Not just because dumb developers have a harder time doing dumb things, but also because it makes it harder for dumb USERS to do dumb things with their smart phones.
Futhermore:
With the growing popularity of Droid, I fail to see how this article isn't anything more than FUD. Bottom line, you have 3 choices:
1) Buy a Droid. Have the freedom of the market to go find your apps and assume the risk that they may cause problems with your phone because you (the casual smart phone user) can't tell legitimate, quality products from the bad stuff. But, hey, you can get *whatever* a developer can dream up for your device.
2) Buy an iPhone. Enter the walled garden, never to leave again. You may not have ALL the options of the Droid, but that's OK (because you are the casual smart phone user). As said before: you like your phone because "it just works" and you don't even realize that it is engineered to prevent you from doing stupid things.
3) Don't be smart. Go buy a flip phone or some string and a can because you (the casual phone user) are know you are only interested in the distractions a smart phone can provide. You are just as able to play Farmville and Angry Birds while you're supposed to be working anyway.
So let's take this back to the "personal computer is dead" argument:
The casual computer user is only interested in doing a few things in their digital life: social networking, email (assuming social network doesn't already cover this), and lite office productivity (finances, word processing, etc). Because their systems are so "open" relative to... say an iPhone... they are easily fooled into taking the bait on digital items that compromise the productivity of their computer (viruses, spam, etc) or the machine breaks because they did something stupid (yet again... casual user). The computer breaks and someone like me gets paid to fix it at a cost that sometimes matches the current value of the machine. That's a bad system because the only time it's worth it for such an effort is when there is when data needs to be preserved. In the mean time, productivity/enjoyment is lost.
If I told any of my customers that they could buy a machine that does EXACTLY what they want it to do and be less prone to errors, they would raise their eyebrow at me. They'd ask for more info. The cost is less so the machine is now disposable, and now it is really hard to have errors because you can only install stuff that is in this walled garden. The only other question they'd ask is, "Will I be able to do [all the aforementioned stuff]?" I would say yes and they would immediately buy one for everyone they know because not everyone wants to be a Systems Engineer.
For those of you who are "techies", great! There are more than enough of us to make sure that market perpetually exists. The market may look scary now, but that's only because it's still trying to work itself out.
