I wonder how Apple did this math? I look at this way: Microsoft pushed tier-1 support, at least, to the resellers, right? I buy a Windows laptop and do Bad Th

I wonder how Apple did this math? I look at this way: Microsoft pushed tier-1 support, at least, to the resellers, right? I buy a Windows laptop and do Bad Things via the admin account, what do I do? Go back to where I bought it, or I call the Geek Squad. In the case of Apple products, I'd take my shiny laptop back to the Apple store, and they'll deal with it (generally). So is that support cost baked into the already-high cost of Apple hardware+software? That said, your argument is probably a good one, too--the carriers and platform vendors really do like lock-in, so they would likely do whatever they could to turn off root access.