> Apple had the hardware and were providing the software thus locking out any competitors from their platform. Lockout is one way of looking at it. Another wa

> Apple had the hardware and were providing the software thus locking out any competitors from their platform. Lockout is one way of looking at it. Another way is that it gives them the ability to make things integrate extremely well. Seamless integration like Apple does is extremely difficult to achieve without complete control of the ecosystem. > Not to mention, they were focusing on the design aspect of the devices themselves which others were not. This is where Microsoft still falls hopelessly short. They make ugly, geeky looking hardware. Everything Apple makes looks and feels beautiful. > It seems the iPhone is their meal ticket, if the iPhone eventually fizzles out, where will that leave Apple I'm not sure which other phone I could buy that would integrate with the rest of the Apple ecosystem? Unless they lag really badly in whatever technical advances mobile phones make, this doesn't seem likely. Some people like myself don't keep buying iPhones because of its technical specifications.