From what I've seen the computing press basically gave them a free pass on that - even when it meant companies whose Sandy Bridge computers they'd reviewed and given glowing marks to were quietly shipping machines that were inferior to the reviewed versions because they totally lacked any free SATA connections for storage upgrades.

How many of those games and video encoders and real world benchmarks are compiled with Intel's compiler that uses intentionally de-optimized code pathways on AMD chips?

I wouldn't be surprised if Intel was still doing this, actually; they certainly continued with it far after everyone else gave up.

Carelessly installing ffmpeg-based DShow filters system-wide tends to have side effects like breaking games - you have to be very careful which formats you enable them for.

According to Apple's official page about Gatekeeper you have to be part of their $99/year Mac Developer Program in order to get a code signing certificate. I think they've been rather misleadingly describing it to the press as free to members of the MDP, and some of them have dropped the qualifier.

I think historically it was even worse than this for telephones actually - there was no legal requirement for the incumbent to allow local calls between them and the new upstart in the same city at all, so they didn't, and what use is a phone line that can't actually be used to phone anyone you know living in the same town or any local companies?

Apple have locked all their iDevices down in order to block firmware version downgrades, because they're scared of someone jailbreaking them that way.

According to the official Apple site you have to be a member of the $99 a year Mac Developer Program in order to get a developer ID. From the way the Verge piece is worded, I suspect that Apple have been feeding journalists a line of BS about it being free to registered Mac developers, which is technically true - it's just that you have to pay an annual fee before they count you as a developer in the first place.

I don't think they are actually. According to Apple's webpage for Gatekeeper you have to be part of the $99/year Mac developer program. The only person claiming that they're free is Gruber, and I think he's either misunderstood what Apple has said or is being deliberately misleading. Notice how the Verge piece says there's "there’s no cost to developers beyond the standard Mac developer program fees" - the developer IDs are technically free to registered developers but since in order to register as one in the first place you have to pay the annual fee they're not actually free in practice.

By being default-enabled, requiring admin privileges to change, and no doubt coming with scary warnings about how you'll get hacked if you disable it.