The fact that Apple has built its user following, along with the huge number of nearly religious followers, against Ubuntu's (or Linux's, really) much smaller a

The fact that Apple has built its user following, along with the huge number of nearly religious followers, against Ubuntu's (or Linux's, really) much smaller audience gives concessions to Apple to make moves such as this. That's too easy. Linux also has a contingent of nearly religious free software fanatics. Moreover, Apple is now strongly represented in niches that Linux was traditionally strong in, such as academia and developers. Let's not forget that Apple was in dire straits in 1997 and was only a tiny fraction of its current worth. It has only been the behemoth it is now since 2010 or so. The difference with Apple and Canonical is that when Apple introduced products they were often miles ahead of the rest, while Canonical is mostly catching up. OS X provided a UNIX with a modern display server and good usability in 2001. The first version of Ubuntu was released three years later and had a lot of shortcomings that were only solved later or just now (such as a modern display server). Apple defined the modern smartphone in 2007. The first preview of Ubuntu Phone was released six years later. Apple is now extremely large, but 2001 Apple and even 2007 Apple was not. I'd feel much more comfortable making "deal with it" decisions affecting my users than if I were running a much smaller operation. Except that Apple canceled unsuccessful products as well. Ping, iTools, .Mac, MobileMe, Aperture, Xserve.