True to a point, although I think this is a but of a false dichotomy. I'm not 100% sure having to do slightly less tech support is really worth the cost of giving one company complete control of our computing experiences anyway.
For years the most common cause of people's computer issues was a combination of the terrible security or MS operating systems circa Windows 95 - XP and overly complex programs with badly designed UIs.
I'm sure it is possible to create a platform where one can install whatever software you like but not run a huge risk of malware. For example you can run applications in a sandbox which will stop them from damaging the system. Applications would then only be able to break out by exploiting the OS itself, so you build it on top of something like OpenBSD.
So you can avoid security problems without complete control, but you also mentioned the UI, and it is just one part of the overall experience.
E.g., today most people don't really differentiate parts of their experience defined by the OS from those defined by application makers. So you have to control the ways your users install software, if you want users to not hate your product because of some crappy app.
To be honest, I doubt that without such complete control there would exist a computer / tablet I could recommend to, say, my non-technical mother, and be more or less sure that she won't hate all computer-related things afterwards.
For years the most common cause of people's computer issues was a combination of the terrible security or MS operating systems circa Windows 95 - XP and overly complex programs with badly designed UIs.
I'm sure it is possible to create a platform where one can install whatever software you like but not run a huge risk of malware. For example you can run applications in a sandbox which will stop them from damaging the system. Applications would then only be able to break out by exploiting the OS itself, so you build it on top of something like OpenBSD.