The Walled Garden
Way back in the day when MP3 players were all the rage, I was excited to purchase one of those touch screen iPods with apps that looked more or less like an iPhone without the phone part. It worked great, but one thing really annoyed me: being forced to use iTunes to get MP3 files onto and off of it. There were any number of wannabe collection managers for MP3 files. I found all of them tedious. I was happy enough just to rip my music CD-ROMs into directories organized by artist. It maddened me that I couldn't just drag them onto the iPod via USB cable, but instead had to import them into iTunes and create a playlist for transfer.
For an ecosystem that was supposed to be friendly to non-technical users, it was maddeningly hard to explain to my then girlfriend, who didn't at all understand the concept of syncing a playlist on a computer with her player and was forever needing help.
More than app store, the music store with it's iTunes software represented to me the gatekeeper. The walled garden is one of the reasons I opted for buying my own Android phone, even though my employer would have given me a free iPhone.
Even though I avoid Apple products, opting for Windows or Linux desktop and Android phones, I'm bothered by the idea of other companies wanting to have their cake and eat it too: offer their apps through the app store (profiting off of the reputation Apple has cultivated for being more secure, letting Apple test and host their apps), while going around the T&C to keep all the income generated from their apps.
It looks like free-loading to me.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
