ech0sphere

yes, you are correct. I misused the minimalism analogy. the command line was the minimalist champion, and in my opinion, linux still holds that crown, despite apple's influence on minimalist implementations of windowing systems and UI.

I think it may be worth mentioning the history of the technologies and companies behind them. Apple has always been more focused on the aesthetics of their products compared to competitors. Their OS and other software products have always been "prettier" than the offerings of MS and the linux community. In contrast, linux has a history of minimalist UI design, disregarding aesthetics for functionality. Developers that work on the new products like iPhone and Android tend to come from the old school and bring they're relative biases and habits with them to this new arena. I think as the android platforms mature, we will see a blurring of the aesthetic lines between the two products much as we have seen in the mac/windows/linux world with OS X, Windows 7, and Ubuntu.