I think the criticism that a closed ecosystem is myopic and a competitive disadvantage is a fair one, though. Apple used to have a monopolistic stronghold on smartphones, but that is no longer the case. As in the nineties, a walled garden is going to look less appealing if there are cheaper, more open competitors offering as-good or better hardware.

Outside of phones, their MacBooks are teetering on the edge of no longer being competitive. The sole reason I most recently bought a MacBook instead of a different PowerBook with a tablet screen is that Linux support for tablet screens is still lacking, and my desire for POSIX overrode my desire for a touch screen. The next time I buy, I doubt that will be true of Linux. Either Apple will come late to the game with touch screen laptops (rather exemplifying the article's point that their hardware lags the competition), or they won't, and it will make far more sense to get a faster third party tablet book and put a free OS on it. And I doubt the average customer will care as much about POSIX as I do, but again, as in the nineties, serious developers aren't going to take Apple seriously forever if this keeps up.