At the risk of re-igniting that flame war, I posit that this is also a cathedral vs. bazaar issue. OS X is more or less centrally planned, by one company, Apple.
I would think so, but OS X has had several great or important applications within it's ecosystem, that break UI conventions.
Twitter clients used to be a playground for new UI concepts, none of which came from Apple. The Sparrow mail client was a good example of something probably more influenced by Tweetie than anything else.
Even Apple doesn't have a ton of consistency. iTunes continues to baffle me with random changes things like what resize does. The App Store app shifted the window management buttons.
So I don't buy that the OS X ecosystem is a "cathedral" at all, just a bazaar with better taste.
What's interesting is that I noticed the standards of design for Mac apps were significantly better than Windows apps when I "made the switch" several years ago; and these are for apps that were not coming out of Apple. I could never entirely figure out why; the ecosystem was just more attuned to details.
I posit that Apple was helped by having the right people excited long enough to get a great ecosystem going.
Linux didn't die because it's a bazaar; every modern app ecosystem (OS X, iOS, Android, the web) functions like a bazaar. Linux just made it absolutely painful to set up shop.
Yeah, but you need an architect that people will listen to in order to build a cathedral. It has to be many people, united under a common vision. That's really hard to pull off in the Linux community.
