>Imagine the opposite case: Microsoft or Dell decides to lock things down and start demanding 30% of every dollar that flows through their gear. I think few wou

>Imagine the opposite case: Microsoft or Dell decides to lock things down and start demanding 30% of every dollar that flows through their gear. I think few would say they have any sort of moral right to that. You're underestimating the bias. People would be rioting in the streets if Microsoft or Dell decide to do the same thing. Apple could make the cut 70% and you'd see people defending it saying "security & easy payments", while ignoring the same arguments when it comes to security beefed up a little bit in Windows 11 or with secure boot back in the day. For example, ransomware and cheating in games could be reduced by an order of magnitude overnight if Microsoft locks down Windows like iOS, but the pros are never discussed, only the antis. Similarly Google's privacy issues weren't discussed back in the day because they were fighting Microsoft. Stories about Google starting tracking which stores people visited wouldn't get upvotes. One small misstep by Microsoft and it'd be all over the front page for days. Palladium was railed on at during the early 2000s, along with DRM, then Apple implemented Palladium and DRM, there was barely a peep. Same with Chromebooks that were locked down much more than any PC. You had people recommend that others purchase Chromebook and iPads, because computing freedom suddenly didn't matter when it came to these companies. MS got a lot of shit for just pre-installing IE while allowing Netscape to be installed by the user, imagine if they had banned other browsers like Apple does. The difference in moral arguments from users are substantial.