As far as building a moat goes, I'm skeptical about whether there's any profitable field that Apple wouldn't, eventually, venture into. I'd agree that it would

As far as building a moat goes, I'm skeptical about whether there's any profitable field that Apple wouldn't, eventually, venture into. I'd agree that it would give you a longer runway, but I don't think it's enough to altogether discourage Apple. Look at where they've gone already: music (in a big way); phones (in a big way); eBooks (in a more failed way); heck, they couldn't even leave well enough alone with the iPad, they decided to market directly to the medical profession and compete one-on-one with startups in that field too. I betcha that, somewhere on one of Apple's campuses, there are individuals using Pro/E (or similar), and that makes Steve Jobs grind his teeth at night. And, they've got more money than god at this point; like the Eye of Sauron, all they need to do is move their gaze into another market, and they can compete in it. You're right about the effort required to build a thing, though. I was thinking more along the lines of longtime independent Mac software brands, like Panic.