'Cloud' computing not so bad
The essence of this rather long rant of an article is that the age of personal computing is coming to an end, to be replaced with vendor-controlled devices and cloud comupting.
Bring it on, I say. Two decades of personal computing has brought us nothing but botnets, malware and spam. The auther of the article laments the lack of "freedom" to install whatever software he wants on his device. However, Joe Public does not deserve that freedom, neither do they need it. It does more harm than good, as the never ending security issues with Windows show. All that Joe Public needs is a device that works, performs the desired functions and is secure, and especially is secure such that it does not turn into a malware and spam spewing zombie without its owners knowledge. The iPhone ticks all these boxes as far as I am concerned.
There will always be a small minority of power users who will want to tinker and have the freedom to do with their boxes whatever they like. They will continue to be able to do so, with a standard PC and an open source OS.
Joe Public, on the other hand, is much better off with closed, secure systems. The less control for Joe Public the better.