I remember reading how Apple now turns hacked iPhones into shiny bricks when you update them.
They also charge an additional 300 dollars for black ibooks with slightly upgraded RAM. Now, you can upgrade the memory on the white ibook to match the memory of the black one, but if you don't pay an Apple technician 90 dollars an hour plus the cost of parts, you will void your warranty. These guys are even worse than Microsoft, mostly because Microsoft never pretended to be a good company. Perhaps "Assle" is a more fitting name.
And I don't know how Assle's philosophy will mesh with Google's "don't be evil."
I don't know the details about the hacked iPhone bricking, but it's not so far fetched that whatever Apple does to update the (hacked) firmware simply happens to brick the device. I don't see why they wouldn't simply revert the device back to the pre-hacked state if they could do it.
And by the way, you CAN upgrade the RAM and even the hard drive in a MacBook without voiding your warranty. I upgraded both in mine. They can be accessed by taking out the battery.
Apple is not "worse" than Microsoft because Microsoft is a monopoly and Apple is not. Not having your life affected by Apple is as easy as not buying Apple products. Not so with Microsoft.
IMO the reason that Microsoft managed to get its monopoly (one of the reasons, at least) is that they "settled" for controlling the software on top of an open platform, whereas Apple wanted control of both the OS and the hardware, thus biting off more than they could chew.
And I don't know how Assle's philosophy will mesh with Google's "don't be evil."