Markos Moulistas, runner of Daily Kos, is an ardent iPad supporter. But, when faced with issue of closed system, pointed to a 13 year old kid who had developed an iPad app. Proudly proclaimed, "If it's closed how did this kid develop an app!" Completely ignoring that the kid had to use a separate, more open system to achieve this fabled goal.
Which is one of the problems I have with Apple apologists. The gist of their support for Apple's policies relies on two issues I happen to disagree: 1) That it's finally providing a platform for independent developers to get develop stuff and 2) That Apple products "Just work!", which is the fundamental trade off of a closed system.
The first issue just sounds rather ridiculous, as it ignores that most of what we use on the internet and in our day to day life comes from garage programmers who have always had a platform to create and distribute their own software. What Apple has actually done is find a way that they can personally profit off of that freedom and essentially make every independent developer an Apple employee that pays the company.
The second issue is with the "It just works" mentality. For years Apple has justified their closed systems with the mantra that in doing so, they create a device that just functions the way the user wants without having to deal with crashes or inconsistencies. Seeing as how each of my apps takes a nose-dive at least once a day (sometimes more. The other day my Evernote app crashed 9 times in a row), and the number of times I've had to reboot the entire phone just to get it working again actually seems to be larger than the number of times I've had to reboot my Windows 7 machine.
But above all is how Apple simply treats the idea of an open system as a choice as repugnant. They don't even provide the option to open the system for people who know what they're doing or at least feel confident in their abilities to operate the device. Apple even treats people who seek to open their system with jailbreaking as a violation of their rules which gives them legal right to brick the device you paid for. Apple's continued insistence that they still own the device I paid for is the greatest sin, and the one that is the biggest deal breaker these days.
tl;dr: LOL Appl€