What Steve Jobs says... (Score 2, Informative)

Only Apple fans could possibly be surprised by Wil Shipley's article. Compared to other software and hardware vendors, Apple aren't particularly different in their outlook on keeping users tied to their systems. Steve Jobs said in an interview with Walter Mossberg in the Wall Street Journal (June 2004):

"We don't want to get into something unless we can invent or control the core technology in it. And the more we look at it, for more and more consumer devices the core technology in them is going to be software. More and more they look like software in a box. And a lot of traditional consumer electronics companies haven't grokked [fully understood] software."

Put another way, by controlling the software we can tie users to our products. It's an attitude shared by many other software and hardware companies and obviously Apple doesn't "Think Different(ly)" in this regard.