The fact that you are here typing this reply right now is entirely because of the state of Windows during 98 and XP. It's a balance between security and freedom. You are arguing for the benefit of security while ignoring the effect that freedom has had on the last 30 years of computing.
OP is establishing that there are different types of users with different usage requirements.
You and Grandma are very different users. Grandma is probably much better served by an iPad and App Store than a true general computing device. Grandma is also not going to invent the next internet.
Maybe we should embrace this dichotomy instead of pretending one size fits all.
Interesting aside: How much innovation does the world miss out on if we raise the next generation of users on locked down "Grandma" interfaces?
And secondly, since you can't install the next internet on the iPad, Grandma is never going to get to use it.
That's my point though. One size fits all doesn't work all that well in practice. As a technologist you seem to prefer the freedom of general compute. As a fellow technologist, I agree. We are a minority though. The vast majority of people don't seem to want much more from their devices than a working browser. (and maybe Instagram). To them things like root access are more a liability than asset.
> Grandma might not invent the next internet on an iPad but your kid is also never going to get that opportunity.
This is a real concern to me. What happens when whole generations view computers as black boxes of consumption rather than tools of creation / something to tinker with? Probably nothing good.
I do think both types of users can co-exist on the same platform. People of all knowledge levels use Windows & Android.
This is false.
An eco system can easily contain a locked down channel for installing programs as well as an open channel to side-load.
Actually Playgrounds is pretty amazing. And you can definitely spin up a development platform in AWS and then Remote Desktop from your iPad or access via Coda or similar Terminal tools.
Edit: :)
The point is that certain parts of our society are not technical and will never be technical. Despite the expectations and wishes of a tiny minority of technical people.
The web is such a killer app, that if MS blocked it, it would be a problem for MS, not the web, imho.
Also IANAL, but given that MS launched a competing service - The Microsoft Network - this seems like a huge anti-trust issue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MSN_Dial-up
The combination of consumer demand for web access + anti-trust would probably crush MS, and it would have to provide access.
Another factor is that Windows was always a target for hackers, so it's virtually certain there'd be some jailbreaking solution that everyone would use if MS started blocking access to killer apps like web access.
MS was a near monopoly, but there were enough exceptions that people were aware how amazing the web is.
Finally, if MS took the Walled Garden approach, it's easy to argue it wouldn't be the monopoly it was. MS benefited immensely from its platform being "free" (as in pirated) and "open" (as in hackable and insecure).
There was a company who took the other approach. Its name is Apple and it wasn't doing too well against MS in 1995.
But that's all beside the point, the web was a killer app because it was available. Microsoft could have killed it with the same policies as iOS long before it was ever popular. And not by targeting it specifically for competitive reasons but just because it would have been against the very same rules we take for granted now. It wouldn't have even had to be conscious effort.
You can't even get another web browser on iOS! We literally can't even invent the "next web" on mobile. There's no point even trying.
This right here.
I wonder if anyone at Apple even cares. Maybe they’re so pompous they don’t think anyone other than them even could invent the next web.
Whoever does, will have to invent their own hardware too I guess.
There is plently of room for inovation.
Emabrace network protocols and native apps.
You could not see AOL pages from CompuServe and vice versa.
Perhaps a locked-down Microsoft store would have had all kinds of ancillary benefits such as freeing up all the money spent padding their bottom line and dealing with externalities (malware cleanup, etc) and redirecting it towards having competitive open-source/GPL products for regular users. Perhaps all the forgotten OSes that died out due to Microsoft's dominant position would have found their fanbases and survived (OS/2 Warp, AmigaOS, BeOS, etc.) and the web would have avoided the IE6 problem that was due to Microsoft's prevalence.
Microsoft may have brought computing to the masses in the 90's due to Windows prevalence in that era, but assuming the web wouldn't have happened without them is a bit much.
Also you had more technical users back then as the majority of the base who really wouldn't have stood for that. Hell, most probably wouldn't have stood for mandatory OS activation via modem if Microsoft had required it.
