Funny how history seems to be repeating itself. Seems like Mac OS vs. Windows all over again, on phones. To go down that tangent for a minute -- I've been want

Funny how history seems to be repeating itself. Seems like Mac OS vs. Windows all over again, on phones. To go down that tangent for a minute -- I've been wanting to bounce these thoughts of HN for awhile. I always heard people argue (when I was a wee lad) that Apple not licensing their OS freely like Microsoft did was a terrible mistake, as proven by their rapidly diminishing market share. You could argue that, well, they're doing better now, but I wonder if this is a short term aberration. Their recent success seems to have been propelled by their innovation in the mobile space (much as their early desktop success was propelled by... their innovation in the desktop space), but I wonder if history will repeat itself: Apple does well at first, until competitors roughly catch up in terms of features, for cheaper, and with a more thriving market of third-party apps, and more and more people switch to the new platform and Apple's marketshare shrinks. I'm sure many people have made this observation before, and have much more insight into the situation than I do.