From my view, this quote summed up so much of what's wrong with the article: "If it’s for those who still want to make some sort of argument predicated on shou

From my view, this quote summed up so much of what's wrong with the article: "If it’s for those who still want to make some sort of argument predicated on shouting the word “OPEN!”, that’s sad, because Android’s “openness” is a meaningless bullet point to average users and a facade championed by its most devoted." "Open" is not just a keyword, and it's not something that "average" users should feel so complacent about ignoring. While issues exist with Android's Honeycomb branch and openness, the bottom line remains that Android is far more open than iOS, and that average users benefit. For one thing, that openness makes censorship much more difficult, and so users get access to a wide array of content that is unavailable or difficult to access on iOS. The other side is that Android's openness means that app developers are free to make their apps more useful, such as remapping volume keys to page turn buttons in a reader or allowing users to set phone features based on triggers (Locale, Tasker and to a lesser degree Shush). Even if users are not by and large aware of the effect that openness has on their experience, it does have a very positive effect for them. The recent example of Instapaper being crippled by Apple's design decisions in iOS 5 is a good example of that: had Apple been more open in their approach to iOS's design, then Instapaper would be able to store data somewhere else and thus to deliver a better UX. I remain unimpressed with articles that simply assert that "openness" doesn't matter to users, without exploring what effects the open-vs-closed dichotomy has on their experiences.