I am not an Apple fan at all but I would say that Apple tries to run their business similar to Nintendo, a tightly polished OS tied to hardware. I say tries as it appears to me that their quality has dropped since the death of Steve.

To your parent; >Well if we're going to dive into morality, requiring me to produce additional pollution and e-waste to run your program when I have a perfectly capable turing machine already is unconscionable.

No one is requiring you to buy Apple OS or Nintendo games.