If Apple owns the OS, why should they not be able to restrict it’s use?
Apple with 10% or the US personal computer market and less than 5% of the Worldwide market, is not in a monopoly position. Ergo, they cannot be accused of "anti-competitive" behavior like Microsoft has several times been convicted of committing.
As a matter of law, as has already determined and ruled on by the judge in the case, neither Apple or any other company can be considered illegally monopolistic about their own copyrighted, trademarked, or patented products.
You said — Funny how Apple is allowed to get away with the kind of anti-competitive behavior that Microsoft could only dream of doing itself.
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Funny how Apple could be anti-competitive with less than 10% of the market... LOL...
Ring me up again when the number gets up to 90%.... :-)
Read the license agreement of both companies. This isn't about "Apple allowed to get away with" anything. Microsoft WANTS everyone under the sun making PC's that run their OS. That is their business model. Microsoft does not make the hardware their OS runs on. Therefor, it is to MS's advantage to have everyone making hardware.
Apple is a completely different company - their business model is to tightly integrate hardware and the OS (one of the many reasons that OS X is greatly more stable, by the way).
The only real caveat to MS's license agreement is that it not be copied, and that the software must be registered. Apple's OS License agreement specifically states that it must only be installed on Apple's hardware. Apple's OS also requires certain proprietary code in the OpenFirmware of the computer. The only way to install OS X on non-Apple hardware is to "somehow" reverse engineer this code from the ROM of an existing Apple machine, and either clone it via software in BIOS, or to actually manufacture knock-off chips with the code - both of which also violate Copyright.
Lets say that you make product "A". That product requires a gizmo to operate. It just so happens that your gizmo, that you also have the patent and Copyright on, makes your product "A" very attractive and profitable. Joe up the road sees that you are having success with product. He decides too makes something similar to your product "A" - we will call it A-clone, but isn't quite as innovative, and won't quite work with your gizmo. So - Joe decides to buy real copies of your gizmo, then reverse engineer it so he can figure out how to get it to work with his product A-clone. He finally succeeds and starts selling his A-clone product, with your gizmo. His product isn't really your product A, but it functions similarly. Unfortunately, Joe doesn't spend as much for his components for his A-clone, and his hardware isn't really comparable to yours. But that's ok. He is making money, while you are not making as much because your Product-A is actually your main profit generator.
Now - your license agreement for your gizmo specifically says it is only to be used with genuine "product "A". It also says that any reverse engineering is a violation of the license agreement.
Further - some people are buying his product A-clone. They see your gizmo - because that is what really makes it work. But they have some problems, it doesn't work as well as on genuine product "A". So now your reputation begins to be weakened because of some user's experience with your gizmo, but used with a product that you did not make, nor do you support.
And by the way - Apple tried the clone path for software licensing. It nearly folded Apple. They realized that their hardware was the biggest profit-maker. And by supporting clone makers, that meant they had to support the OS installs on hardware they didn't make nor specify - again, a giant cost.
And with 10% or so of the total PC market, I fail to see any sort of monopolistic practice. Hard to be charged with that when you have such a minority share. MS, when they faced such anti-competitive/anti-trust charges, they had 97% share. But even that wasn't the key - they were forcing other companies out of business by changing the rules using their monopoly. Even today, many web sites are way out of compliance with html standards - but it is because of MS's browser dominance.