@windywoo
I was waiting for one of you lot to chime in with your usual brand of nonsense. I've read some tinfoil-hat bollocks on these pages, but this really takes the biscuit! This ruling is based on points of law, not the impassioned rantings of a foolish fanboi. Yes. I'm calling you a fanboi. So here goes at taking your comment apart piece by piece.
"By allowing OSX to be installed only on their hardware they can choose to put huge markups on that hardware." Absolutely. This is a FREE MARKET ECONOMY, and this is how they work. The reason that Apple have a significantly smaller market share (when are you going to learn that market share isn't actually THAT relevant?) is BECAUSE they charge more. It's also the reason that they have made more money than Dell. It may be your right to call Apple money grabbing cunts, but it doesn't mean that you are correct. In fact it makes you look like a colossal dick, of which I have the right to say too.
"Secondly, this is bad for the internet as a whole. Since one OS accounts for 95% of PCs out there its very easy for a virus writer to hit a large number of users and the incentives to write viruses are therefore greater. This has less to do with Windows security flaws (and of course they exist) than the fact that its such a huge target." And therefore easy! In what fucking universe is this Apples fault or even their problem?! It's not the DoJ's fault, and it's certainly not Microsoft's fault. It's got to be just about the most fucking stupid point that this debate has heard! If anything the blame for this lies with cheap consumers, of the percentage you quoted, how many of those are pirated? I'd guestimate at a fair few (MASSIVE understatement). Who's fault is that?
"There are only a handful of alternative OSes and even fewer of those are of appeal to the consumer market. Apple creates one of these and they sell it like its some sort of luxury chocolate. Ignore the marketing and fanboi bleating and you will see that it really isn't any such thing, but what it does offer is an alternative to Windows that has lots of software and hardware support."
You're repeating yourself here and you are still wrong. This is a FREE MARKET ECONOMY, and this is how they work. For instance, I can grow Braeburn apples and market them as the sweetest apples in the world, selling them for £100 each. I would have perhaps a small market share, but I'm the only grower of this particular variety, and it's my right to sell them at a price I see fit. This could result in me selling none. You could come along and sell Macintosh apples for 10p a pop, marketing them as apples that are sweet enough. That's your choice, but you would have to sell 100 apples for every one that I sold. To achieve this, you let anyone sell our Macintosh apples. You would arguably have the market share, but at what cost financially to you and your investors? Also by flooding the market with a cheap alternative, you run the risk of sub par products getting through. These are essentially the two different business models that Apple and Microsoft follow. Both have their merits, and if the former works (it is for Apple, but sometimes it doesn't, and the company goes bankrupt) it's far easier to manage and much more profitable for less work. You don't have to like it, but the other option is no choice, and we all know how well that worked out. You can by the cheaper apples if you want, but the if you want the Braeburns, you're going to have to pay. Go and have a read of 'An Inquiry Into The Nature And Causes Of The Wealth Of Nations; by Adam Smith' (found for free here; http://www.adamsmith.org/smith/won-intro.htm). It outlines this far more eloquently than I ever could.
"If the diversity of operating systems was as great on PCs as it is on mobile phones, virus writers would have a much tougher job spreading their payload. It would also put to the test fanboi claims that OSX is virus proof." I've already answered that. I don't think anybody has ever claimed that Mac's are "virus proof" in any seriousness. If they have, then I have to agree that they are just deluded fanbois. No more deluded than you though! Trying to blame Apple's business model for a lack of diversity in the market place and the resulting 'pandemic' of viruses is at best clutching at straws, at worst, fucking stupid. Really, if one buys/downloads a free AV client, and takes the proper precautions (i.e. NOT PIRATING SOFTWARE) viruses and trojans are not really that much of a problem for anyone. Microsoft have responsibly tackled this with each release of Windows, making it a very secure platform, AS secure (and maybe more) as Mac OS, Linux and the other Unices. They've had to do it with using unpopular mechanisms, but IT IS THEIR RIGHT TO PROTECT THEIR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY, just like Apple have the right to protect theirs.
"As it is, Apple sit in their isolated corner of the internet and mock Microsoft for making an operating system that doesn't just run on the handful of PCs Apple makes. Apple are elitist control freaks who like to think of themselves as visionaries. They are no more than peddlers of shiny trinkets to the vain and the stupid." Ah, poor 'ickle Microsoft. :( It's not fair that those nasty boy from Apple bully you. Wait a minute...
You, sir, are an arrogant and deluded prick. Yeah, it's ad hominem, but after reading the shite that you wrote, you deserve it.