> "It's Apple's product so they can do anything they want and therefore there is no reasonable discussion to be had about whether or not it makes sense or is offensive or the right thing to do"

The problem is also that it's this kind of attitude that allowed Microsoft to illegally leverage its monopoly to pressure other markets, with the excuse that "Hey, you don't have to use Microsoft if you don't like their terms".

The crucial difference here being that Microsoft had a monopoly.

In the tablet world, so far Apple enjoys a near monopoly.

With tablets, Apple has a competitive advantage, not a monopoly.

A beginning monopoly is not necessarily the fruit of unfair practices or abuse of power. But when a company has more than 70% of a market worldwide, it's a monopoly. By definition, monopoly is a competitive advantage. Because Apple volumes in tablet sales dwarfs all of its competitors, it necessarily has an enormous advantage on price buying screens, RAM, flash, etc.

Apple has had over 90% market share since the iPad came out. It's a monopoly by all definitions of the word.