>Superior for developers because their margins improve. First, this is debatable itself, walled gardens bring their own advantages for developers too. But seco

>Superior for developers because their margins improve. First, this is debatable itself, walled gardens bring their own advantages for developers too. But second, why exactly should developers be the primary concern? There are three parties involved after all: the platform creator/maintainer, the developers, and the users. Why should users not have the choice to essentially collaborate with the platform creator to promote their interests, even at the expense of the developers? I mean, I know this is HN, and a lot of us wear developer hats. But we tend to wear user hats too, and even in many cases family (or business) support hats. Switching to one of those, developers on open platforms are often jackasses and can develop their own power imbalance vs users. Sometimes (often even!) a single particular piece software can become so vital and represent so much investment that it's much harder to substitute than even the platform itself. At that point any single user faces big hurdles vs the developer. The likes of Adobe and others have repeatedly been able to force very user hostile choices on their customer base because their customers couldn't really coordinate collective action. One thing Apple offers is a way to buy into a collective action system against developers. For many people that's not a bug, that's a feature, so complaining about how developers are "hurt" or "make less money" isn't going to sway them one bit, quite the contrary. They're generally glad when Apple tells devs their way or the highway[Android/Linux/Mac/Windows]. Of course, this concentration of power also has negative implications too in terms of censorship, inability to do some very useful creative development and utilities, potential for major harm if/when Apple goes bad, etc. But too many on HN have refused to recognize the strengths and the reasons why it's been popular and to try to find ways to incorporate some or all of those while still allowing power users/misfits/hackers to push the envelope. I think our collective disdain for many regular non-tech users is part of why we've ended up in this mess in the first place.