But there is a minute, yet important difference: the App Stores are entirely controlled by Apple, whilst Microsoft never restricted or controlled your access to

But there is a minute, yet important difference: the App Stores are entirely controlled by Apple, whilst Microsoft never restricted or controlled your access to their platform as a software provider. So, maybe they "dominated" because of Office et al., but they never pro-actively locked out other providers - a policy common on the iPhone, formerly on the old Mac OS, and now apparently coming "back to the Mac [App Store]". The same thing was (and, in parts, even still is) the case with hardware: it was a piece of cake to sell hardware for the Windows platform (worst case you had to write your own device driver), but particularly tricky to do so for Mac. Apple now has the lead because they were first with many neat things on OSX, the iPod, then the iPhone and now maybe the iTablet. So they were first with a clean mobile platform. But Android has caught up and Windows 7 has just downright copied the entire OSX experience and maybe even added a few features of its own. So can Apple stand its grounds with their tight policies? I say, only if they manage to constantly stay ahead of competition, just as now maybe with the tablet PC approach. But how much longer will they be capable of delivering ahead of everybody else? And if they don't stay ahead, will they open up to let independent and innovative developers to maintain the lead or will they not? And in that respect I think current signals are rather discouraging.