1995 again...

Recently, there has been a lot of rhetoric regarding the closed Apple App Store found on the iPhone and the (underwhelming) iPad. 

Some people say that a closed App Store is bad for developers, not giving them freedom, and furthermore, the users do not have the freedom to install what they want.  This is somewhat true -to develop apps natively on the iPhone you must use Objective-C (although there are alternatives out there, such as Appcelerator or Novell's Mono-Touch).  

However, some say that that a closed application store is good for developers and consumers, because they allow for the developer's publicity, and the consumer doesn't have to worry about nasty bugs or programs that steal information.

The point of a closed App store is looking at a computer as an appliance rather than a computer.  The appliance style of thought requires a set of activities that the computer is allowed to do, rather than allowing the user to understand these commands.

While this seems bad for the user and the developer, I do believe this is the computer will end up being an appliance.  I believe this is best for the user and the developer.

A closed application store (and thus the computer as an appliance) means that for the most part, the user is safe from installing bad software, and thus ties the developer's hands behind their back to prevent them from coming out with shoddy software.  In fact, I honestly believe that Apple should tighten their app store even more to prevent subpar or buggy software from coming in.  I do believe that some of their rejections are complete nightmarish though (such as blocking a dictionary app for having naughty language).  

In the end, the user is not only safe, but also saves time - no more researching on what applications are the king in the sea of subpar apps (for an example of this, take a look at the sea of CD Burning software that is available for Windows).  Furthermore, it just works.  There's no need to worry about installation (a process that really needs to die) or worry whether or not what you downloaded is actually a rogue antivirus. 

I also believe that this is good for developers.  Yes, it removes them from having complete freedom, but that can actually pay off.  It inspires creativity from solving the additional problem of not being able to access the file system, for instance, as well as inspires more education to make their applications up to snuff.  This would increase the quality of developers, and inspire more competition in the marketplace, especially regarding price.  Furthermore, the tools are right there. For instance, with the iPad, you need to use 

I am, however, not going to engage in the doublespeak that I've seen regarding how a closed app store actually gives developers or users more freedom.  It doesn't, but it does make users more secure, and it makes developers produce high quality apps (in a perfect universe).

For instance, I asked my father to go and download Microsoft Security Essentials on his new laptop.  He asked what it was, I said it was an antivirus.  He downloaded an antivirus, but it was the infamous Antivirus 2008.  Now when I go back home, I not only get to deal with that infection, but any other infection he picked up while not having an antivirus on.  What I should've said was go to Ninite and told him to download MSE there.  While Ninite is not an app store, it's a repository of apps that are chosen by the owners of the site, and probably the best compromise of what is out there - safe, reliable apps that are chosen to be there because they are of high quality.