Now this is interesting, and I'll riff off of it in more detail elsewhere, but I wonder whether Paul's rear-view mirror has a rosy tint: Apple has always had a difficult, off-on, love-you/ignore-you relationship with its developers. Back in the day when Develop! magazine would come in the airmail people were complaining about Apple's treatment of devs. Keeping them "close", but being super-secret all the same, mercurial one might say. Wonder where they get that from ;-)

Approaching the main point of the mobile platform I note or postulate

• It's a platform and platform is still important. The cabal of web browsers is one. Mobile is another. 

• For there to be change there either has to be a moral movement inside Apple (unlikely) or an adequate competitor. 

• Devs deserting Apple's working platform in any meaningful number is unlikely

• Palm or another getting a web-style, or open development process in place is also unlikely. 

• In a fair fight between Apple & Google over consumer electronics, Apple would prevail. 

• Google's offering will never be homogenous enough to offer a great experience and hence adequate competitor. 

Yes, devs may be hacked-off, but that's not enough to materially change the landscape. We've been here before, and analogous to the
illusory era before the current financial calamity, the world has not changed that much.