Very glad that someone is at least thinking about this
When you have a practical monopoly, you can dictate terms, and Apple were so successful for so long in getting their consumers to do things Apple's way, that the mindset seems to have changed from 'What does the customer want?' to a kind of design imperialism - as if these products were coming out of some Ministry Of Technology which expects that the proles will just have to read the pamphlets and adjust their habits. They figure that if we want it that bad (iPhones and the shiny mobile space, next-gen game consoles, access to new TV and movies, etc) we will get it on the producers' terms or not at all.
Only recently have there been major signs of customer-dissension actually changing this mindset, such as the MS U-turn on some of the nastier proposed features of the XBox One, and the grudging semi-return of the Windows start menu. But everyone outside Apple has just been dazzled at the degree to which unwanted or unwelcome changes can be forced on customers without any major penalty on sales (if any).
As regards computing, I think the argument is skewed by the 'middle bell' consumers you mention. Before the reductionist age of the iPhone came in, we were talking about a band of people (and lets avoid demographics here, insert your own prejudices) who formerly relied on spouses, friends and relatives to set up and/or troubleshoot their computing experiences.
With practically all the options taken away (apart from the colour of the iPhone case), there was little left that could go wrong anymore. Today's middle-bell computing consumers feel liberated from the thrall of geeks, I think, and to boot have become the defining force in the consumer marketplace. What they will accept, en masse, is what the rest of us will end up with, like it or lump it.
On the plus side, it's still the same crazy jumble of spaghetti wires behind the shiny shiny, and those who are able to work with that can still do so, and arguably have better tools to do this than they have ever had. And, mostly, the tools are free.
It's just that geeks have to work harder these days to get their own computing experience 'their way'. And many of the most popular consumer products, following the iPhone/iPad model, are hermetically sealed in every sense imaginable. That won't change, so long as the numerous middle-bell consumers keep consuming.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
