I had some serious doubts about putting this on HN, and I'm glad to see that my worst fears weren't realized. What swung me towards posting it was the hope that

I had some serious doubts about putting this on HN, and I'm glad to see that my worst fears weren't realized. What swung me towards posting it was the hope that someone on here would have some insight as to why Apple is following this course; unfortunately I have not seen anything solid in that regard. My own take is that to some extent, it's about social class. There may be FoxNews fans who are Mac fans as well, but Apple's brand is an aspirational one; and like BMWs or Volvos it ends up being associated with upper middle-class liberal values even though the product itself has no such bias.