[bane]

> If only we could live in a world where we have a healthy competitive ecosystem of Apple-like companies.

That would require these companies to share interoperability specification. Something Apple tries mightily to not do.

All that being said, Apple definitely sets the gold standard on the user-experience axis, and the entire landscape is better for it.

[malandrew]

Actually we are worse for it. No one focuses on cooperating on standards that could provide better experiences anyone. How often do you meet an engineer that has contributed to an IETF RFC or a W3C specification, and implementations of that specification.

If anything, Apple has popularized the tragedy of the commons, giving everyone a false prophet to worship: walled gardens are the way to make seemless experiences.

The only reason walled gardens provide seemless experiences is because everyone trying to make their own walled garden fragments things further.

I know of know experience more seemless than Internet Protocol. RSS and XMPP were also pretty seemless for the user.

A vision of the world where walled gardens are viewed as the only path to a seemless experience produces a vicious cycle leading to a dystopian self fulfilling prophecy.

[roberthahn]

Not at all. Each Apple-like company would create their own inter-op ecosystem for their own devices. In this hypothetical world, Todd would get exactly the choice he asked for - all of the good user experience without the Apple brand.

[bane]

Ugh, that sounds like a dystopian future to me. It reminds me of Sony's attempts at roping people into their media ecosystem during the 80s and 90s.