First, lack of a conviction for anti-competitive behavior doesn't imply that Apple's not actively trying to hurt competitors or consumers. It just means they haven't done anything bad enough to warrant the government getting involved yet. But more than that, I'm not sure we should even care about convictions. I think every major company tries to create an environment in which they have the best chance of success. A lot of times they do things that are anti-competitive and harm consumers in order to create that environment. And a lot of times those things slip under the radar. I think this article does a great job of describing some of what Apple has been doing in that regard with iTunes and the App Store. And to pretend that Apple's recent actions haven't actively hurt other companies and even its own customers is ridiculous.

Finally, the statement that "Steve just makes his products and if someone wants to play in his sandbox they play by his rules" could just as well be applied to Gates. But if I were to make such a statement most people Apple fans would flip out. So Steve "just makes" this personal music management software that everyone loves which is great, and then says oh wait, if you want to use it to sync with a portable music device you can only do it with our product. Way back Gates "just made" this operating system that everyone loved which was great, and then said oh wait, if you want to surf the web you'll have to do it with our product (that wasn't even the restriction, which is yet another absurdity of this comparison). Somehow otherwise intelligent people magically dismiss the former as Jobs just exerting his right to dictate the terms on which you can use his products, while considering the latter massively anti-competitive behavior. Someone please explain what's going on.

They're different parts of the same integrated system. How many people download iTunes just to use it with their iPod or iPhone? If you'd rather have an open system that allows interoperability between tons of different devices made by tons of different companies, Apple's not for you.

* Somehow otherwise intelligent people magically dismiss the former as Jobs just exerting his right to dictate the terms on which you can use his products, while considering the latter massively anti-competitive behavior.*

The rules change when you have 95+% market share. But even then, the government really did nothing about IE integration, and the world didn't end. It turns out integrating IE in Windows 98 wasn't the death knell to competition in the browser market we thought it was.

Hmm, isn't WebKit integrated into Mac OS X so it can be used as a system-wide HTML rendering engine?

As for the "Jobs vs. Gates" article, comparing the business practices of Microsoft and Apple by pointing out that Gates makes a lot of philanthropic contributions (and in fact also spends lots of money lobbying for the US government to spend more money on Gates Foundation-related projects) is just nonsense. "But great wealth does not make a great man." Neither does making lots of high-profile charitable donations. Frankly, this whole thing of having to be seen doing charitable work is a bit disgusting. Not that charity is bad, but shouldn't being a successful businessman involve shipping a great product rather than in cultivating an image to keep the antitrust crowd off your back?

This said, it's no better when the EU and DoJ go after Microsoft and Opera's CEO cheers them on. Maybe I'd actually try out Opera if they didn't support using bureaucrats to destroy their enemies.

As one hacker once said, "Shut up and show them the code."

What about the cease and dissist letters and attempted suit of people who named their products closely to Apples? Remember the iPod fiasco where they tried to use that sword and try to cut out the heart of a coin counter company?

Earlier today there was a thread about possible tainting of the bing serps by microsoft, one of their employees did his very best to make it clear that they have changed their attitude. I salute the man for his upright position on this, if everybody there would be like that it would be a different story altogether, but it is going to be a long long time before I'm going to give microsoft the benefit of the doubt on stuff like this.

The road behind is literally littered with the corpses of companies that came under the tank, and a good portion of those did not do anything to deserve the treatment they got.