Apple already runs an App Store on a platform where consumers and vendors are free to choose it when they please, and free to avoid it if they don’t. It’s called The Mac! No wonder Apple has been so keen to teach the next generation “what’s a computer”. Ignorance is strength.

When Apple keeps rapping about how the iPad is the purest expression of what they want, they’re taking about the absolute control. A completely sealed ecosystem where they alone control all flow of oxygen. Every user, every vendor, living exclusively under the grace of Apple.

This is also where Apple’s otherwise commendable alligience to privacy comes in. The more afraid they can make you of open platforms, including software on the Mac or just the web in general, the more eager their consumers will be to give up their freedoms for “protection”.

But really, did you live in constant fear of malignant software on the Mac for the past 20 years? No you didn’t. There are ways to build open systems with strong protections and APPLE PROVED IT! Now they’d like you to forget that proof.