By way of disclaimer... I recently switched off of iPhone in favor of Android - primarily because AT&T's network sucked and not really as any statement against

By way of disclaimer... I recently switched off of iPhone in favor of Android - primarily because AT&T's network sucked and not really as any statement against Apple (I refused to continue paying monthly for a phone which had no reception through much of my workday). Overall, as a developer I'm highly in favor of open platforms, language choice, etc. However, I can't help but thinking that a tightly controlled application space the way that Apple has maintained so far is what has helped make the iPhone and iPad successful. One thing I notice on android is the lack of consistency in UIs. Sometimes the back button takes me back a screen in an App - sometimes it dumps me back to the Home screen. Sometimes it dumps me back to the last App I was using. The iPhone apps tend to look relatively uniform UI wise and behave as expected. Encouraging the idea of cross platform apps means you start to get less and less "platform integration". It means we end up with 4 or 5 smartphone platforms none of which have any advantage because they're all running inconsistent crap. I want my hardware + software platforms to be able to be unique and tailored towards themselves. I have seen very few truly cross platform apps which actually work well. iTunes itself is a great example - it acts weirdly and looks woefully out of place on Windows. It's the ugly duckling, and it behaves like someone chopped one of it's legs off. The benefits of tailoring software to a particular platform should be obvious, and I much prefer them.