But the kind of easy to use and nice to look at stuff that Apple specializes in is really rare in this world. Why? I do wonder if overpriced and restrictive has its advantages in avoiding the rank debasement of everything into a cheap shit commodity.
............
Perhaps.
Maybe you need a Jobs or a Wintour (or her fictional counterpart, Miranda Priestly) to be the style Stalin, ensuring with an osmium gloved fist that pretty is as (under the hood) pretty does.
But if so, that has much more to do with the undemocratic character of aesthetic judgement than with the open or closed character of the underlying software architecture.
Actually, I think what we're seeing here is a species of category error in which, the beauty of Apple's products gets confused with the restrictiveness of the Apple system.
Bringing this back to Ubuntu once more, parent company Canonical brought user friendly order out of happy (and often, not so happy) chaos, creating a consistent look and feel while retaining non-restrictiveness. So yes, hierarchy without bolting the door closed.
I happen to think that this System76 Starling -- <http://bit.ly/lFdi0> -- running Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.04 is quite lovely. So lovely, I'm using one right now.
.d.