An Observation

My parents unknowingly bought each other iPad 2s for Christmas. I bought them an Apple TV. I hooked up and configured the Apple TV in about 5 minutes. The iPad 2s took about three minutes each. Within a half hour, I was showing them how to stream videos and music over AirPlay, watch Netflix from the Apple TV and rent movies from iTunes. We ended up renting Rise of the Planet of the Apes as our "holiday film" this year and it was as easy as hitting "Play Movie" from the film's description page.

You can preach all you want about rooting your phone and hacking your tablet to do inane things, like control your refrigerator light, but my family was actually getting things done within 30 minutes of opening and activating their new computers - yes, computers.

I'll take a well-polished ecosystem over "open" every time.