"It’s incorrect to expect iOS to be as “open” to developers and their businesses as Mac or Windows"... Unless there are fundamental limitations, why shouldn't it be as open as Mac OS X? I should be able to download apps directly and purchase them through a curated app store. I should be able to download apps through somebody else's app store. If people value the benefits of a curated app store over the looser conventional OS model, they'll vote with their dollars and only then will developers follow. But I don't buy the notion that iOS should be less free because of arbitrary market conditions and rent-seeking Quasi-monopolies, or that that's just the way it is, and we should just grin and bear it.