When does concisely articulating an obvious conclusion become a rant? What makes it a rant? Is it the fact that you disagree? Or the fact that he uses the word "absolutely" ?

From the information available to me, it appears to me that there is absolutely no altruism in Apple's programming classes.

I didn't actually state it was a rant, only that the quoted statement was about as close to a rant as I could find. Personally I didn't find it to be a rant either.

Oh, I apologize. When you said "That's about as X as it gets" I thought you were using the common US idiom conveying an extreme degree of X. (I usually make this mistake in the opposite direction, misunderstanding an idiom by taking it literally, rather than mistaking literal writing for an idiom)