I'm not saying that Apple wasn't successful. Just like they have become the "mind share" (RIM still has the market share) leader in the phone market, they ruled the personal computer market before the PC clones and Windows 95.<p>I can see how they had some success during their time with 3rd-party hardware vendors but that was short lived never truly made a big challenge vs. the Win/PC market. Also, this was during the non-Steve Apple and we can be sure that he won't be opening up any Mac OS to third parties because he wants to keep that control.<p>I'm saying that if you look at the entire time period from when Apple had a 90% PC market share to it's less than 10% and compare that to entire Win/PC market you have to say that a system that is open to 3rd parties is more successful than one which is locked down.<p>The iPhone and iPad will probably be better products than any Android powered device but that doesn't matter because history shows that a closed strategy isn't successful in the long run.