David Kearns III thinks so:
It appears that what Apple has done is to take meaningful, desirable third-party services and applications and "roll their own" inside the operating system, thus presenting users with a fuller package of features. Of course, the third parties that had been providing these services as add-ons now are left out in the cold. When Microsoft does this, it's denounced as a predator and a monopolist. When Apple does it, it's praised as an innovator. Still, if Microsoft didn't have Apple to point to as "competition," there might be more calls for government regulation of monopoly operating systems. We certainly don't want government bureaucrats designing our server and desktop environments.
It appears that what Apple has done is to take meaningful, desirable third-party services and applications and "roll their own" inside the operating system, thus presenting users with a fuller package of features. Of course, the third parties that had been providing these services as add-ons now are left out in the cold.
When Microsoft does this, it's denounced as a predator and a monopolist. When Apple does it, it's praised as an innovator. Still, if Microsoft didn't have Apple to point to as "competition," there might be more calls for government regulation of monopoly operating systems. We certainly don't want government bureaucrats designing our server and desktop environments.
[ Apple: Predator or protagonist? ]
And I have to agree. Of course I have little choice being focused on Microsoft development tools. Even if someone gave me a Mac to replace every PC in my network, I couldn't use them to deliver Microsoft solutions, and I have to relearn my staff in the ways of PHP and Java (instead of the ColdFusion and .NET that we use now). Still resulting in a loss.
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Disclaimer The opinions expressed herein are my own personal opinions.