You're assuming they did it on purpose. Why assume that?
Ever heard the saying about not attributing to malice something that can be explained by incompetence.
The malicious assumption is in the parent post ("Jobs didn't get the market share he has by being nice") -- I'm saying that's unlikely, hence I agree that Apple's problem is most likely due to incompetence.
First, it's extremely risky. It would expose Apple to class-action suits from users, as well as giving other companies fodder for an anti-competitive practices lawsuit.
Second, this particular error is more likely to hurt Apple's reputation than Microsoft's: The article says that the crashes were observed when plugging in an iPod or launching iTunes. Users will almost certainly associate new crash behavior on an otherwise stable Windows system with their last action: using an Apple product. If Apple really wanted to hurt Windows' reputation, they would have made the crashes random.