I think they'd be 'worse' monopolists than Microsoft.
We already know they're worse monopolists than Microsoft. Whenever Apple has ever owned, or nearly owned, a market, it's been bad for consumers. Apple charges higher prices, has egregiously bad license agreements, has notoriously poor interoperability (ever tried to integrate Mac OS X into a heterogeneous network with LDAP or NIS? I have, and it was not pleasant, and it was at least as bad as integrating Windows into the same network, and in many ways much worse...at least we could buy products to make the pain go away on Windows, not so on Mac OS X; this from an OS claiming to be a UNIX I found particularly galling), and one-size fits all product lines.
Apple makes beautiful products, but if they ever really won in any particular market, I suspect we'd all come to rue the day. And, of course, Microsoft did eventually fall...nobody outside of a few small niches realizes it yet, but Microsoft is no longer the dominant monster they once were. They now have to compete just like the rest of us to hang on to those revenues.
Microsoft's arrogance was borne of market strength. Apple's arrogance is baked right in, and never goes away, no matter how well or badly Apple is faring in the market.
We already know they're worse monopolists than Microsoft. Whenever Apple has ever owned, or nearly owned, a market, it's been bad for consumers. Apple charges higher prices, has egregiously bad license agreements, has notoriously poor interoperability (ever tried to integrate Mac OS X into a heterogeneous network with LDAP or NIS? I have, and it was not pleasant, and it was at least as bad as integrating Windows into the same network, and in many ways much worse...at least we could buy products to make the pain go away on Windows, not so on Mac OS X; this from an OS claiming to be a UNIX I found particularly galling), and one-size fits all product lines.
Apple makes beautiful products, but if they ever really won in any particular market, I suspect we'd all come to rue the day. And, of course, Microsoft did eventually fall...nobody outside of a few small niches realizes it yet, but Microsoft is no longer the dominant monster they once were. They now have to compete just like the rest of us to hang on to those revenues.
Microsoft's arrogance was borne of market strength. Apple's arrogance is baked right in, and never goes away, no matter how well or badly Apple is faring in the market.