This is certainly something that I'm personally sensitive to, and think that it'll take something of a generational shift to get towards better-design open platforms. One of the things that "open" tends towards is the "middle", since, in order to get more people to contribute, you've got to make political compromises in order to gain a wider following.
Oftentimes this means adding more and more features rather than cutting (or, in writing terms, "editing"). I think a balance between app- and plugin-based platforms is necessary, so you need to find that sweet spot between meeting the baseline needs of a wide audience (motivating developers to want to build on your platform) and providing enough surface areas for devs to hook into that they can build satisfying extensions (see Firefox, Ubiquity and/or Adium).
That said, design succeeds where there is a vision that is checked against a broad reality. I think Apple is succeeding here, and happens to provide a built-in income model as well (whereas the Mozilla community does not).
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Oftentimes this means adding more and more features rather than cutting (or, in writing terms, "editing"). I think a balance between app- and plugin-based platforms is necessary, so you need to find that sweet spot between meeting the baseline needs of a wide audience (motivating developers to want to build on your platform) and providing enough surface areas for devs to hook into that they can build satisfying extensions (see Firefox, Ubiquity and/or Adium).
That said, design succeeds where there is a vision that is checked against a broad reality. I think Apple is succeeding here, and happens to provide a built-in income model as well (whereas the Mozilla community does not).
Worth considering, for sure.