The author bungles the significance of the iPhone app platform, which is an obvious example of device lock-down and control, not any kind of departure in the direction of openness.  And obviously Apple planned their Tablet in their usual secretive, top-down method of hardware design.<p>There are different issues here, for example company culture as far as internal and external transparency, which is very low at Apple and very high at (say) Google.  Then there's Jobs's intense control of product design, which I'm sure is only to the good.  Then there's being controlling of users of developers through DRM and the app store (as the only distribution channel for iPhone apps) -- I'm not sure where they're going with that (hardware support for DRM? more closed development platforms?) and I'm not sure I like it.