I actually don’t think the “general purpose computing hardware ownership” model scales in today’s world. Sure, enthusiasts will always buy them, but a locked down OS like iOS is a lot more resilient to the myriad of security threats out there. And there are a lot of them now. In my opinion as a consumer, I’m buying an iPhone because Apple curates the App Store and has strict rules for what gets on there. But to do that, they need a lot more info about me.

We’ve entered the era of “computing as a service” outside the enthusiast / PC gamer realm. At the corporate level, this is literally becoming the case: the new model is to just outsource everything for corporate devices, including ownership of the machines, and lease them through a managed services agreement. But this rebundling is less obvious in the consumer space as PCs have largely been replaced by tablets and smartphones (which do follow more of an “as a service” model).