Re:Surprised? (Score 1)

No, Apple is not the same as Microsoft. Never has been, and hopefully never will be. Very few companies are like Microsoft, and I do not mean this in the obvious characteristics such as size, earnings, or other classic business characteristics. In the old days of the giants of technology, when Microsoft was just starting up, most people were still working at or had come from universities - or at least from educational or research institutions. These people, such as Gary Kildall, tended to share ideas and information with each other. These things are neat - you should try building / coding like this! Microsoft, however, started with and still uses a very simple business model. In the Microsoft business model, there will only be one software provider in any given area, and that provider will be Microsoft. This is not in and of itself necessarily a bad philosophy. I will not go into the ethics of their past means of implementing this philosophy, but merely point out that Apple has never set out to be the only supplier of any given technology. Their old motto referenced this quite succinctly - "The computer for the rest of us." Apple products aren't for everyone, and I for one can live with that. It appears that Apple can live with that, too.