After reading Steve’s biography, I’ve been left thinking about his intense passion for end-to-end integration to tightly control the end user experience. Most notably, this was played out in the war between Macs and PCs with Apple and Microsoft in opposing corners during the PC computing age. Because I’ve always been a tech fiend; someone who isn’t afraid of tinkering and playing with new gadgets; I’ve always sided with the open ecosystem movement – it gave me the freedom to modify my computing devices however I like, with whatever mix-and-match of hardware and software suited me. But Jobs intuited that most consumers aren’t hackers, they’re afraid of technology and the user experience for this vast majority of users must be tightly controlled so that technology empowers them instead of debilitating them.

The analogy I’ve used to gain a better understanding of the philosophies underlying this contention, is that of a takeout pizza v/s cooking at home. There’s no doubt that most people can carefully choose ingredients, choose a recipe they love and create a great meal at home – but if the problem is finding calories, and most people are afraid of moving around in the kitchen, the solution most suitable is that of a takeout pizza.

Both solutions get you the calories you need. But one is suited for people who’re looking for optimizations apart from just getting the calories, and the other suited for people who just want the calorie problem dealt with so that they can focus on other things.

I’m not going to lie, I do love a good takeout pizza! I guess this sort of integration has only gotten more tightly controlled in recent times. For the battle on mobile phones, both leading contenders – iOS and Android – are more tightly integrated than competitors during the PC age. So, it seems like the vast majority consumers are mostly fine with pre-packed food for their primary computing device. Do you agree?