I would think so, but OS X has had several great or important applications within it's ecosystem, that break UI conventions.

Twitter clients used to be a playground for new UI concepts, none of which came from Apple. The Sparrow mail client was a good example of something probably more influenced by Tweetie than anything else.

Even Apple doesn't have a ton of consistency. iTunes continues to baffle me with random changes things like what resize does. The App Store app shifted the window management buttons.

So I don't buy that the OS X ecosystem is a "cathedral" at all, just a bazaar with better taste.

What's interesting is that I noticed the standards of design for Mac apps were significantly better than Windows apps when I "made the switch" several years ago; and these are for apps that were not coming out of Apple. I could never entirely figure out why; the ecosystem was just more attuned to details.

I posit that Apple was helped by having the right people excited long enough to get a great ecosystem going.

Linux didn't die because it's a bazaar; every modern app ecosystem (OS X, iOS, Android, the web) functions like a bazaar. Linux just made it absolutely painful to set up shop.

There is nothing stopping people sourcing the parts from the bazaar and using them to build a cathedral.

After all it's exactly what NeXT (and Apple) did.

Yeah, but you need an architect that people will listen to in order to build a cathedral. It has to be many people, united under a common vision. That's really hard to pull off in the Linux community.

This is a reason for poor design, not an excuse