[sciprojguy]

Why, exactly, are they evil? It's not as if people who buy Apple (like me, and I develop for iPhone/iPad too) don't know what they're getting. I like the walled garden Apple has because:

* It makes my life as a developer much easier. I only have one App Store to aim at, and with a few hiccups here and there from inexperienced or overzealous reviewers the guidelines are pretty clear. If I had to design for half a dozen or more apps I'd have that many more versions of guidelines to worry about.

* I don't need to worry nearly as much about scam or knock-off apps siphoning off users, since Apple is proactive about that. Not perfect, but very proactive.

Those are just two off the top of my head. There are more, but I'm getting hungry.

[moksly]

Because they are limiting. I’m personally in the iOS boat, and it’s great until you try programming on your iPad instead of your non-closed MacBook.

Phones, consoles, tablets are closed because the companies that build them didn’t have competition from open platforms. Computers are still open because they still have competition, if they didn’t they’d likely all be chrome books.

I know it’s sort of hypocritical, but the walled-garden is only nice until it’s curators considers your needs to be weeds.

[sciprojguy]

You might not have seen this: https://developer.apple.com/swift-playgrounds/

It's pretty nice to be able to build entire Swift playgrounds on your iPad, then share them with your Mac/MacBook. The IDE is simple and very straightforward, and it's useful for prototyping things on your iPad or iPad Pro.