Sure, and if there aren't hundreds of millions to be made in some area, the rules for that area might not change.
The point is that we should be very unexcited about the walled garden approach because it will exclude a lot of cool and fun and useful software. Even if they make an exception for high-grossing software, the whole idea is still a bad one.
The Accessibility API is excluded from the Mac App Store under the new sandboxing rules, for example. Most people won't notice. But it's incredibly inconvenient for those people whose 3rd party accessibility tools give them the ability to use their Mac.
That depends on how high the walls are, and the argument could be made they're not very high at all. A minor entry fee, hardware (don't count this highly, someone wanting to develop for platform x likely already has platform x), and an approvals process that blocks mostly porn and malware (plus a few more edge cases).
That's my argument - "a few" edge cases aren't actually that few, and these are edge cases with the potential to grow into hugely productive industries.
Under the current scheme, DOOM would never have been released, and the multi-billion dollar action/shooter games industry would be dead on arrival.
Applying the same standards to textual content, sites like Reddit and Digg would never have been approved (in fact Reddit apps on the App Store are rated 18+, a rating strictly disallowed in MS's scheme), and we would never have seen the explosion of link aggregation.
These few edge cases aren't that few, and they aren't that edge casey.
What's wrong with porn? I know there will be plenty available through the browser anyway but it seems odd for an OS vendor to be in a position to take a puritan stance.
The problem with not allowing for 'edge cases' is that a lot of popular software probably started as a weird 'edge case'.
> ...there will be plenty available through the browser anyway...
Except there won't.
Imagine:
1. No third-party browsers.
2. No non-whitelisted sites viewable in the default browser (except maybe in "legacy mode", meaning no scripts, no videos and the browser censors the text.)
3. If you're lucky, there will be an "adult mode", where you can access URLs with adult content (but the "guardians" will be notified of each URL in real-time, along with your name and address. Not the NSA, and not in secret, but one of the filtering companies we know today. And everyone living in the same street as you will get a "Warning! pervert in neighbourhood!" alert.)
The point is that we should be very unexcited about the walled garden approach because it will exclude a lot of cool and fun and useful software. Even if they make an exception for high-grossing software, the whole idea is still a bad one.