There might be something to this if Apple had a monopoly on the "Mobile Internet" (the portion that Wales is referring to) AND forced everyone to interact with the "Mobile Internet" through applications acquired through the AppStore - two problems with this thesis:<p><pre><code> o Apple does not have a monopoly on the Mobile Internet.
o Apple's support for open HTML 5 protocols is stronger
than any previous generation of Mobile Platforms that
connected to the internet.
</code></pre>
We can critique Apple in a lot of places with regards to their AppStore (though, it's gotten much better lately) - but, ruining the Mobile Internet is not one of them.<p>I seem to recall that the iPhone was actually the _first_ really decent phone browser that you could use to connect to the internet - if anything, Apple spawned the "Open" Mobile Internet.
Compare Apple's impact to openness online to Microsoft's back in early 2000. There were a lot of banking and corporate websites that only worked with IE and Active-X. As a result, every corporate machine (and many users of these banking sites) - had to have a copy of IE floating around to fully access the Internet - and good portions of the internet just weren't usable for many Linux/BSD users.<p>Now - how much of the Mobile Internet requires that you use an Apple product? Apple just doesn't have enough market dominance to result in more than a trivial portion of the Mobile Internet to be written _specifically_ for Safari/IOS Browers.<p>Wales is completely off his rocker here. As long as Firefox, Opera, Chrome, and yes, IE, continue to have a strong presence as browsers (and I don't see that changing anytime soon), and as long as Anddroid, WP7, and others start rolling out first class smart phones, Apple will not be a threat to the Mobile Internet.<p>This is one of those cases where lack of a market leader actually results in a better adherence to standards. As long as the focus is "Build an ACID3 Compliance Browser" for the vendors, and developers write "ACID3 Compliant Websites" - we'll be in fine shape (modulo the recent Video controversy)
Title is linkbait.<p>He doesn't like that Apple is the gatekeeper on their App Stores, as if the consumer doesn't have any other hardware options out there...