I mostly agree. You're absolutely right about there being tons of other opportunities out there -- my start-up won't be affected at all -- and I have no doubt people like netvibes or dropbox will adapt. Not to mention I work on apple products 12 hours a day so personally I really benefit from their work.
It's more an issue of building closed platforms. Everyone knows they are bad news but it seems like Apple gets a free pass. Adapting is always a good move, but you have to go meta at some point. A rough parallel would be people living in a locked down communist country... sure you adapt, but on some level it's proper to object to any system that long term consolidates power and subjugates minority interests.
Apple and the iPhone are not roughly parallel to "living in a locked down communist country." You pay for the iPhone. You pay for the cell service. You pay for the shiny MacBook. Nobody makes you pay for these things; you don't have to use Apple products or services if you don't want to. In a communist country you will participate or be imprisoned or killed.
That's why I've never understood the Apple-hate. I mean, yes, I understand that it's great to have open things to fiddle with. At the same time, though, open-source applications are almost never the top-notch apps in their field. I think that Firefox, for instance, is dwarfed in terms of features by Opera and in terms of usability by Safari (my personal favorite). It's partly because Firefox is far more loosely-designed than either of the two browsers. Its philosophy is primarily "be open to change," whereas Opera's is "do everything" and Safari's is "stay out of the way."
Apple doesn't lie to developers about their systems. They present a "my way or the highway" offer. And many excellent devs take them up on it, because they think that the OS X is worth the limitations developers face. Some users think that overall, that is a trade-off that is completely worth it. Others absolutely disagree. But Mac users don't hate "freetards" for their choices. The hate tends to be one-way. Ironic, because a lot of the condescension that Mac users get is from people who accuse them of being elitist.
It's more an issue of building closed platforms. Everyone knows they are bad news but it seems like Apple gets a free pass. Adapting is always a good move, but you have to go meta at some point. A rough parallel would be people living in a locked down communist country... sure you adapt, but on some level it's proper to object to any system that long term consolidates power and subjugates minority interests.