This is quite shocking. I wonder how a platform with such policies could be universally accepted and praised by the tech community. Microsoft didn't achieve this level of closedness but become universally hated.
Seriously? we hear from the non-iOS tech crowd all the time about how locked down iOS is.
Apple's reputation in the tech community is very far from being universally accepted and praised.
However, if you've not seen any criticism of Apple in the tech community, then Google for it, it won't take long to find critical voices about Apple (and I'm not referring to trolling, well thought out criticism is easy to find too).
Apple is certainly more closed than Microsoft ever was. The difference in perception is likely because Apple has never had a monopoly. There are more Android phones than iOS.
[1] http://www.imore.com/debug [2] http://donmelton.com/about/
What I think is happening is that the hipster generation that grew with Mac OS X and helped save Apple is just discovering the Apple of yore.
The old Apple was quite proprietary, but they needed to sell an history to save the company.
So with NextSTEP adoption and increase of UNIX culture at Apple, they tried to cater a picture of standards adoption and welcome feeling to UNIX devs.
I value more cool tech than openess, but to each its own.