iDone, Revisited

As I wrote a few months back, I became a bit dismayed by Apple’s closed architecture on the iPhone, iPod, and continuing now with the iPad.

Andrew Sullivan today linked to an interesting article on the growing “MacSchism” regarding Apple’s tight control over its products, the article ending with a great observation by Umberto Eco:

Over 15 years ago, at the dawn of the Web, Umberto Eco observed that the Mac was Catholic in its gentle, aesthetically “sumptuous” guidance, DOS Protestant in its burdens on the individual, and Windows a kind of Anglican compromise. (Linux and open source, which appeared after this essay, might be compared to the more radically democratic Reformation movements.) So perhaps the early Mac enthusiasts misunderstood the deepest foundations of Apple’s culture. Wasn’t Mr. Johnson’s preferred metaphor, the enclosed garden, a theme of the Song of Songs that became one of the most beautiful literary and visual images of (and sometimes metaphors for) the medieval Church?