Well, lets look at Bluetooth itself as an example - an open standard that tries to enable cool stuff, but which is widely loathed as unreliable and a mess to develop for because all of the vendors got involved and tried to add their own special use cases / protocol variations / etc...
I'm not saying a closed ecosystem is somehow "right" by design, but Apple's proprietary augmentation of Bluetooth sure makes me forget that the watch is using it to talk to my phone or laptop. Maybe its less that closed ecosystems enable cool stuff and more that end-to-end control makes it easier to ensure your cool stuff works properly most of the time.
Closed ecosystems make money very directly by locking in the customer. The vendors will invest heavily in it and it will pay off, hence the "proprietary augmentation of Bluetooth sure makes me forget that the watch is using it". They will not share the tech, by working on an open standards or open tech, because that way the competition profits as well. This is just greed, anti-competitive market abuse, it's not more complicated than that.
not once have I noticed my samsung watch using bluetooth, it connects magically when its near the phone and disconnects when you leave it. Doesn't even matter what phone you use, you could get an iphone. Can't speak for android wear but bluetooth is a pretty invisible protocol, especially when it comes to wearables.
apple does absolutely nothing to make bluetooth invisible and force you to pair it using an iphone based app just like any smart "thing" including apple watch, fitbit, etc.
I'm not saying a closed ecosystem is somehow "right" by design, but Apple's proprietary augmentation of Bluetooth sure makes me forget that the watch is using it to talk to my phone or laptop. Maybe its less that closed ecosystems enable cool stuff and more that end-to-end control makes it easier to ensure your cool stuff works properly most of the time.