Does it? Everyone is quick to judge but coming up with an alternative is hard enough that nobody has done it so far.
With scale comes scaling issues; general purpose computing and repairability need a different commercial model that doesn't match with the currently used models.
This leaves two avenues:
- Make it worse for everyone but keep it going
- Make it worse for everyone in a different way and keep it going
I don't know of a good solution here, but I do know that it's a sucky situation and the many "good ideas" to fix it aren't actually making it that much better.
Current scenario:
- Manufacturer on the hook for most things but also controls most things
- End-users that fall within the 90% bell-curve are fine
- End-users that fall outside of that are royally screwed and they don't even know it
- Users that are not end-users are screwed, but they know they are
So far all I have seen is:
- Manufacturers still on the hook for everything but they get to control less
- Everyone gets a little better but also a little screwed now
- The 10% outside of the curve don't get as screwed as they did but they still don't really know that they are screwed
- The non-users don't get screwed the way they used to but still get screwed
To clarify:
If I were to manufacture something, express what user experience comes with my 'thing' and warrant that experience to a certain degree, I don't want to be on the hook for any service or cost outside of that. The more I get to control, the smaller I can make the risk. That means I can also plan ahead better and reserve resources, but not so much that I don't have resources for something else left over.
This also means that if someone wants a different experience (i.e. they are not my targeted audience) or if someone wants to do something I cannot verify, I really do not want to be on the hook for that.
In total that means:
- If what I want and what my customer wants is similar enough, we're both happy
- If a small percentage wants something else, I cut my losses and simply don't serve their needs as soon as the cost of maintaining that deviation is bigger than what I would make off of it (short term and long term)
- If someone does something I don't have control over, but they do come to me to fix their problem, I don't want to be responsible for that, and I don't want to do any research on the possibility that something I made happened to break at the same time the customer broke something else; I just want a blanket "I am the captain of my UX" rule and be done with it
Now, I'm not saying this is ideal, or that I am an actual manufacturer, or that this is specifically what Google is doing (or Apple is doing for that matter), but I am saying that you can't have it both ways. Want something cheap and abundant? Gotta have scale. Can't have scale if you make a bunch of risk, add a lot of differences and support more than your middle-of-the-bell-curve. This sucks, but it's also not easy as saying "let me do what I want", because what happens to you and your device has side-effects, and I really don't want to get affected by something someone on the mobile network (or wifi network) I'm on did to their 'personal' and 'owned' and 'freedom' and 'muh righz' device.
Or in a high contrast (black-and-white/good-or-evil) line: If you want to be on a shared service, play by the rules or get out. (reality isn't that high of a contrast obviously, but it drives the point of externalities home a lot quicker)