This was before the current tumult caused by the internet and mobile computing. It kind of seemed, back then, that things were going to just continue as they had been, only more so, and everything would be built on top of Windows.

This reaction (over-reaction?) to MS, then, comes from historically-rooted fear. It's a powerful emotion, and sometimes it can be correct.

You know, maybe there's an argument that the Unix world has a persecution complex, because there have been license and freedom debates since the very beginning. Here's an illustrative fragment: http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2012/10/origins-of-geek...

There are more than a handful of us who despise Apple, and for mostly the same reasons we despise Microsoft. They pimp their closed-source, proprietary, locked-down bullshit, and it's "walled garden", closed-off ecosystem just like MS pimp theirs. I have no use for either of them.

Note: written using Chrome on Fedora Linux.

I gotta say it weirds me out when people assert that everyone loves Apple, because it happens a lot; almost as often as people go on vitriolic rants against everything Apple-related.

Perhaps, but the HN sample population is still biased favorably towards Apple.

And I think that while there are some MS haters around here. There are not nearly as many as die hard MS fans would have us believe.

WebKit was not established, Apple forked it from KHTML and it would not be the dominant engine without Apple.

Let's also not forget that BSD would be a rare sight at this point if not for Apple.