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I also think it's wonderful. If Apple leaves progress up to developers, you have people like Aldus inventing new things like Desktop Publishing. Then again, if

I also think it's wonderful. If Apple leaves progress up to developers, you have people like Aldus inventing new things like Desktop Publishing. Then again, if Apple leaves progress up to developers who are waiting for user demand, you'd never get a Macintosh in the first place. Nobody wanted a mouse until they were shown what you could do with a mouse and Aldus Pagemaker. Nobody wanted "undo" consistently implemented across all applications. And absolutely nobody wanted their applications to run in fully little "windows" on the screen. From this cherry-picked example, I conclude that a good platform does allow the vendor to push certain features forward, but it also gives developers a certain amount of leeway to innovate.

glhaynes 16y ago
That's where I think Apple doesn't have as much of a problem as many devs want them to have: they give a lot of leeway already to devs to create tons of apps that people want. C.f. the various App Stores. And when (eventually? I don't know of it happening yet) some "killer app" appears on another platform that isn't possible on Apple's platforms, they can just narrowly relax the rules to allow it. This is why I'm happy to see both models exist and thrive. Android would look like an old Blackberry if not for Apple. And likewise Apple can pick up any advantage that Android has (other than a few, such as meeting the needs of markets outside Apple's target).