[TheOperator]

There was a point around the iphone 5/galaxy s4 era I really wondered what the hell Apple was doing releasing only a 4" phone, with an os roughly equivalent to androids, with less flexibility in what you could do with the device, at marked up prices. Nowadays I appreciate the things like the relative privacy, far superior OS support, and the more locked down security. I still buy Android but that's largely for value reasons. If cost was no object I would buy iPhone.

>Workstations need to be totally user-controlled,

I believe chromeOS is a good example of a stripped down less tunable OS that works great and is perfect for inexpensive Atom based machines that still have good build quality, battery life, and displays while being simple to use.

I believe trying to push the "store" model to desktops smacks of a solution that generates a lot of $$$ for M$ and Apple in search of a problem.