I guess what I was trying to say is that Apple has always had a walled garden. They've always controlled the hardware and the operating system. Because of that

I guess what I was trying to say is that Apple has always had a walled garden. They've always controlled the hardware and the operating system. Because of that they've always had a better experience. They didn't have to support the white box PCs from hundreds if not thousands of manufacturers. Microsoft always aimed to do that and considering the task they did a fairly decent job. But there were always problems. The rise of digital appliances like the iPhone, iPad, and iPod have made people come to expect that level of stability and it-just-works experience from their computers. Apple had that before people expected it. In the 90s and early 2000s consumers shrugged of the bad driver support, random crashes and litany of costly OS upgrades from Microsoft as just how things worked. Moving towards computing as an appliance task, while hard for techies to swallow, seems to be the way things are going. As more people with varying levels of technical prowess get involved the successful companies will be the ones that keep the experience stable. Building a walled garden is the easiest way to do that. Apple did it in the 80s. Microsoft is taking a great step towards building their own with the launch of Surface. I wish them all the luck, competition is great for the market. I just wish they would have done it sooner.