As a result of introducing the IPad, there is a debate going on in the inner web about the pros and cons of open vs. closed platforms. You can read more on this here and here.
I kind of think that with the introduction of the IPhone and the IPad, a seismic shift has occurred. What is happening is normal; people are just trading off what they just want for what they really need to gain significant value.
I buy a Camry not a BMW because, although I like all the amenities of the BMW, I've got other things I want to spend my money on that are more important to me than the leather seats of the BMW. I like those 360 feature in the MS Word, but I can do with just the 20 features that I use the most in Google Docs if you give it to me for free.
Life is really about trade-offs. That's why products and services just tend to branch out to deliver the best value possible for each customer category. PCs are going to start to trade-off the trivial for the important to deliver more value. It happened with the laptop and IPhone and it is happening with the IPad right now.
The advantages of closed system for the average consumer are clear; he gets a superior experience by forsaking some openness that really doesn't matter that much to the average user. Think about it, why do I have to deal with behind the scenes processes that hog resources, viruses & spyware, file systems, installations, etc. when I can allow - by my own free will- Apple to enforce more control and just forget about all that to focus on what matters to me. It's like saying I want to be able to hack a calculator so I can have the ability to multi-task, create applications that work on the calculator, over-clock it's CPU, etc. Not everybody wants or needs that. Many people are not geeks and don't what to be held to geek standards.
The majority of the world wants something that works and gives an extraordinary experience to achieve what matters most to them. It's been happening since the beginning of time, but geeks just haven't realized it yet. Apple has created a device that is really media consumption and that's what most consumers want as will be demonstrated by IPad's sales.
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