I think it's a pretty compelling argument.
you could develop in Flash and bypass the App Store.
Apple aren't in the business of letting other people into their market - it's exactly the same reason MS tried to replace Java with an MS-only C#
The 80's: Own the desktop (Microsoft)
The 90's: Own the network (AOL)
The 2000's: Own the browser (Microsoft, et. al.)
The 2010's: Own the 'Experience' (Apple)
If Apple can entice us all into their walled garden, they'll own our entire experience - not just our desktops or data centers. It'll be AOL, pre-Internet, except it'll be way, way nicer - nice enough that most of us will not complain.
- similar to the 80's: In the beginning of the 80's we had a large number of computer types (IBM PC, Apple II, Commodore, Acorn, Sinclair, BBC Micro, CP/M, etc). In the end of the 80's, only the IBM PC (and Mac) were left standing.
Today we have a large number of mobile companies. In 10 years time only Apple and Android will remain.
(Android is like IBM PC compatibles today: several companies, but they don't control anything as they have to follow MS rules, and they can easily be replaced with another company: see history of Dell).
Wow, I seriously hope not. I like having a real unix-like userland on my phone, and I want to keep it that way.
That's a pretty big if. I don't think more than 20% of all computer activities can be exercised in that 'walled garden', that's consumers only, and mostly media consumption at that.
There's a very large world outside of that.
(And 8-core desktop-class machines with 64-bit address spaces were obviously popularized by the need to run Eclipse, but I digress...)
Also, even Apple does not think everything falls into their 'walled garden', so they'll continue to develop and sell normal computers for the other 80% of activities. But these new kinds of products reflect the shift in the set of activities that dominate modern computer use. The shift allows them to create a viable product that mostly ignores 80% of computer activities, and moreover, by omitting those other things, different design decisions can be made (e.g. walled garden app store) to make it much easier for them to meet the new set of requirements demanded by these media consumption type activities (e.g. battery life, appliance-level reliability). Those design decisions don't work with normal computers, as the requirements are different (e.g. completely general purpose use very important, battery life less important or unimportant [desktops]). So I think it is a mistake to think that even everything from Apple will be walled.
Of course everybody is shifting, IT is a moving target and that will not stop for a long long time. The really interesting question is what it all converges to in the long run, and if that can be 'owned' at all.
Suggestion to bloggers: When you read something that makes you excited or angry, resist the impulse to respond on the same terms. Ask yourself what important factor is being ignored in the current debate.
Singularity Sky : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singularity_Sky
Accelerando: (free ebook) http://manybooks.net/titles/strosscother05accelerando-txt.ht...
Sorry, but physics is against you. There isn't enough wireless bandwidth to do what you suggest. It doesn't exist, we're pretty much saturated as it is.
The only hope is micro cells, tons and tons of them, each with high bandwidth, and low range. Or very directional devices (but that's not practical).
But micro cells with the high bandwidth you hope for don't exist now, and probably won't any time soon.
And if such high bandwidth did exist, I really hope the future of computing is not iPhone type devices.
There is a reason it's expensive: they can not provide service to large number of people at once, instead they aim for high speed to a small number, and you pay for it.
Additionally the farther you are from the base station, the slower the speeds. To provide even decent speeds to lots of people you need many many base stations.
What I'd disagree with is the idea that Apple is trying to transition into a cloud provider with a merely incidental hardware business. I think that's a misunderstanding of Apple's priorities as well as an overestimation of Apple's tendencies to follow fashion.
Apple will stay a hardware company. They will go cloud, but here's the thing: Apple's cloud will be federated. Five years from now you'll buy an iPad and instead of a Mac, its home will be a port-less little monolith of aluminum and rubber that functions as your own little slice of cloud. Even as LTE picks up, a local server will always be ahead with the latest wi-fi revision and no network congestion, and no shared processor load, and this will be Apple's selling point for why their model is better for media use. And, most importantly for Apple's survival, why they can sell you a new one in two years' time.
In a sense, it already is.
A friend's Macbook Air SSD died. We plugged her Time Machine to a Mac Mini, restored into a new account, and she had "her" computer. Had been a day or two since her last backup, but MobileMe brought her latest appointments, contacts, and bookmarks back down from the ".Mac" cloud.
She missed having the portable Air, so walked into a BestBuy, got an iPad, logged into MobileMe, and was immediately checking her half dozen email accounts along with, again, all her bookmarks, appointments, and contacts, because those settings were stored in the cloud. Plugged it to the account on the Mac Mini, and now had her 5GB of photos and 20GB of music.
Three weeks later, Apple gave her a fixed Macbook Air. At boot it asked if she owned another Mac, and she plugged in her Time Machine drive. Slightly less than 9 minutes later, a reboot, and "her" Mac was back, again with every app and tweak. MobileMe sync ran, and by the time she opened her iCal, it was up to date.
The hardware essentially didn't matter. "Her" settings, "her" data, were accessible to her across phone, tablet, other person's computer, and a replacement for her own computer, all with zero I.T. effort.
Best part -- she didn't even notice this was remarkable. She just logged into the Macbook Air and started doing email, right at home, without a second thought.
As for that little monolith? Maybe it's already here -- Time Capsule is an Airport Extreme with built in dual channel 802.11a/b/g/n and another guest WiFi DMZ, includes TimeMachine wireless backup, offers a USB printer hub, and gives remote access that also syncs to MobileMe (which stores documents and personalization in the cloud).
Even if he's reduced to giving the machines away, as long as he can charge rent for access to data (or apps) he's got a business model.
Hasn't Apple repeatedly stated the case that the App Store runs at break even? The whole idea is to drive sales of machines. Now if it is for some cloud based services in the future that might work - still an iPhone unsubsidized is ~$600 so that is a good deal of cloud service revs that need to make up for that.
Restrictions simply won't cut it in that market, and it needs to be seen if something like what Apple is doing will survive without those restrictions.
Also, Apple makes relatively little money from the App Store; they still make most of their money from hardware, even if its increasingly mobile hardware.
The real people they're trying to please are users. They only court developers to the extent that enough apps are generated that it enhances the experience for users. And as both a developer and a user, even though it pisses me off a little bit, objectively, I think that's a good business decision. A locked down App Store, while shitty for developers, does probably create a better user experience and sells more hardware...
PCs aren't going anywhere either. Offices will continue to use PCs even if the consumer market switches to mobile phone/tablet devices.
And Apple isn't going to kill its line of computers with the iPad as they have a very clear and healthy market there. iPads intentionally can't function without a PC/Mac running iTunes. And while every other PC maker has slashed prices and seen downturns, Apple's been growing for a decade. They know what they're doing with their Mac market.
When they decide that sticking to AT&T isn't in their best interest, they will switch to a different provider.
I have my doubts about multi-touch; but always-connected-portable-devices is definitely the future IMHO.
I think Steve loves the idea of pioneering and owning the new computing UI (multi-touch). Maybe he sees this as an end-game, as he has a family, gets older and has had health scares... but insofar as we're reading minds, I don't think he really cares about owning it in the long-term. He'll go off to develop the next new technology, because that's where he enjoys making money. If the iPad isn't a huge hit (or if it is), I bet there are a bunch of other projects in the wings... for the future.
And I don't really see this happening in much of the developing world (most of the world/fastest growing markets) in the coming decades.