[cico71]

Probably nothing.

I strongly believe that Microsoft was already trying to become a gatekeeper a decade ago setting the stage with Hailstorm. Only the fear for anti-trust authorities blocked them IMO.

Now Apple cleared the way and Microsoft already has a much stronger infrastructure in place to become a gatekeeper. I'm pretty sure they will fail at becoming THE gatekeeper, but I think they will still become A pretty large gatekeeper.

People should have voted with their wallet back when the walled garden xbox and iphone were released. But we are talking about the huge mass of consumers that simply don't give a damn.

Consumers swallow pretty much everything, just think about DRM and e-books. We were lucky enough that the industry got caught pants down by Apple with music but they learnt immediately from that.

Besides, both Microsoft and Apple were smart enough to let people think that, after all devices, can't really be locked down. The first xbox was a joke with a very convenient place to insert mod chips and the iphone was immediately jail-broken. But we all know this can be fixed by their side.

Unless things changed, the xbox 360 has very limited hacks to run game backups, but can't run unsigned code (it certainly can't run XBMC which was the reason why I bought the original version).

Apple TV, if rumors materialize in something real, will be the next big appliance following this path. Then, when times will be mature, jail-breaking (hacks in general) will magically become useless and that's it.

Also: Apple has been a little bit more evil by tricking a whole generation of developers (and developers wannabee) that they can make the ultimate app and become uber-rich while we know from numbers that for the vast majority of them income is ridiculous.

As I said, I'm not sure something can be done by us. Of course states should be there to prevent exactly this kind of behaviors but we all know how it works with politics and lobbies.

[Turing_Machine]

"People should have voted with their wallet back when the walled garden xbox and iphone were released."

With very few exceptions, phones and video game consoles have always been "walled gardens".

[cico71]

I guess it all depends on how picky one want to be.

Before the generation of consoles that includes the xbox, I can't remember of any real attempt to lock them down by preventing unsigned code the be run (and I don't consider not releasing an SDK really a walled garden).

I also don't remember Windows Mobile preventing people to run homebrew code and Symbian enforced signed-only code roughly when Nokia N82/N95 came around.

Anyway, locking some API/functionalities is different from requiring all code to be signed which in turn is different from requiring that all code must be distributed by a single entity (that can apply arbitrary terms of conditions to distribute it).

Although In logic "slippery slope" reasoning is a fallacy, in -real-life, it happens all the time. Draconian rules are introduced one step at a time so I still think that was about the right time to vote with your wallet.

[unimpressive]

>With very few exceptions, phones and video game consoles have always been "walled gardens".

True. The problem comes when people try to use them as general computing devices. Or even, when manufacturers treat general computing devices like phones and consoles.

[cico71]

I'm not sure what you mean here. Consoles and smartphones are general computing devices and are clearly marketed as such. Consoles are not only used for games/audio/video and smartphones are definitely not used for phone calls.