To put it in a different context, a lot of people (myself included, and I'm a hardcore techy) prefer to play video games on consoles rather than PCs so as to avoid dealing with all these headaches.  You want to just put the game in, press play, and it works, without dealing with device drivers and hardware incompatibilities and software version conflicts.<p>The fact that the model is now being extended to things like web browsing and e-mail isn't necessarily a bad thing for 90%+ of the population who just want a device that always works (and always works the same way).  It's turning functions formerly reserved for a computer proper and moving into the closed-off-but-much-more-straightforward consumer electronics space.