It's worth noting that the article is about the development of specialized hardware rather than walled gardens. In many cases this can be hugely beneficial. N

It's worth noting that the article is about the development of specialized hardware rather than walled gardens. In many cases this can be hugely beneficial. Not only has it allowed for the development of energy efficient hardware to watch videos on a smartphone, the same concept has allowed for the development of efficient encoding hardware for video to serve that market. Likewise, the energy efficient processors that enable media consumption have other applications. In the end we carry around a tremendous amount of general purpose computing power in our pockets. Walled gardens and specialization are somewhat different concepts. The former is primarily concerned with restricting how hardware is used, while the latter is mostly concerned with optimizing hardware for specific applications. While there are times when these two concerns can overlap, this need not be the case. This can be seen historically. Early microprocessors were developed for integer calculations, with floating point operations being done in software or with an optional floating point coprocessor. Floating point was integrated, and became a fundamental part of our notion of general purpose microprocessors, later in the game. The path taken in computer graphics was much more complex, but it is also worth noting that it started off as specialized hardware. Experimentation resulted in GPUs becoming a generalized tool. Recent developments have encouraged them to diverge into a multitude of different specialized tools. Both of these examples illustrate how specialization has broadened what can be done, without creating and environment that restricts what can be done. While I agree that walled gardens encourage media consumption at the expense of experimentation or creation, this is more of a cultural thing. There is far more money to be made in the former than the latter, so that is what the market focuses upon.