That's an important distinction between Apple and Microsoft that goes way back to their founding: Microsoft was always a developer-focused company (remember Steve Ballmer's infamous "Developers! Developers! Developers!") whereas Apple has always been focused on the end user ("the computer for the rest of us"). In the early days when developers and technical people comprised the majority of the personal computing market Microsoft dominated. Nowadays we live in a world where there are several million developers and technical people and several billion non-technical people. Since Apple has always catered to that market it should be no surprise they're now dominating. In that vein it's important to understand that Apple is not a technology innovations company, they're a technology solutions company. Their raison d'être is to put sophisticated technological solutions into the hands of non-technical people and make them successful using it. The walled garden which developers frequently complain about is what allows me to hand an iPad to an 8-year-old and not worry too much about what they're going to put on it or how they might compromise the device.