One of the things that happens is that a lot of these ecosystems attract young entrepreneurs who, devoid of business experience, jump in head first and give it all they got. They see accidental success stories like Flappy Bird and think "If I can do 1/10 of that I'm set". Three years later they are alive to regret the opportunity cost they wasted on that decision.

I am going to say that in business you have to be quite sanguine. Not always, of course, but the world and your competitors want to eat you alive, and if you walk into one of these arenas unprepared you are going to get used, abused and tossed out.

I don't want to be negative on Apple but I would sure like to know the numbers on the millions of developers who contributed massive amounts of time to the growth of this platform with free apps of all kinds that didn't even buy a daily loaf of bread for them. While developers were enjoying their get-rich-quick scheme, Apple piled billions of dollars (I lost track, $100 BN, $200 BN, more?) by selling hardware on the strength of a platform made useful by millions of free apps that nobody made any money on.

In a nutshell, I don't really like it when folks get used and discarded --which is precisely how I see what Apple did. They controlled the platform. They could have setup a win-win. They did not.