common misunderstanding of antitrust law. "Prominence", dominance or even monopoly is not actually illegal. There's nothing wrong with being absurdly successful, after all.
The anti-trust laws are for when that power gets abused -- when one uses their monopoly power as leverage over another market. In the case of Microsoft, by bundling IE with Windows, they were using their OS monopoly to crush a competitor in the market for web browsers.
None of this applies to Apple because they have nothing close to a mobile monopoly. If they did, the lawsuits would be over their position as gatekeepers of the entire market for mobile apps.
"I know I would be pissed just because I am getting pulled over because I resemble a suspect the cops are looking for"
The thing is, when white people are looking for a white suspect of a crime, they identify (for example) a heavyset 30-ish white male with short cropped brown hair, wearing a red tshirt and blue jeans. When they are looking for a black suspect, it's "a black male".
This attitude is reflected by your own (probably well-intentioned) statement that people who live in a majority-black neighborhood all resemble each other. Take it from a (white) guy who has lived in some -- they don't.
P.s. Video of LeVar Burton explaining how he talks to his son about what to do when you get pulled over: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2013/07/02/2245561/levar-bu.... This is what a bona fide, well-known and family-friendly celebrity has to deal with in ordinary life.
Joking aside, I'm surprised more isn't being made of Balmer's hand in this mess. Some of XP's staying power is surely due to it's being the first "good enough" Microsoft desktop OS (win2k notwithstanding), but the back-to-back failures or Longhorn and Vista had to have an enormous hand in a generation of users never upgrading. That eight year chasm is breathtaking.
Back in 2010 I moved to a new city, and was trying to find a graphic design firm that wanted an in-house web developer. I shopped a resume (with prominent link to on-line portfolio) to all sorts of shops, never got a single call back.
A while later, I had brief access to a Mac, and decided to check out my site there (those were the dark OS 9 days when Mac testing was sort of optional). Turns out that a CSS glitch in IE Mac would take down — not just the browser — but the entire computer. I had been walking around crashing systems and losing peoples work for months.
You seem to have a pretty good idea of your own shortcomings — which is a good sign imo, nobody can or should be good at everything — so why not play to your strengths and partner with someone else for the design work?
I've been doing small self-generated projects with 1-2 partners for years. One of them is gaining traction and about to take off in a big way (I hope). I never would have got to this stage on my own.
Note that having a partner isn't the same as selling out, or developing a project with an overmanaged 12-person team, etc. It's pretty much the same as going it alone but with a friend to bounce shit off of.
In 1993 I came across an email address that purportedly belonged to Douglas Adams, so I wrote and said that his nonfiction book "Last Chance to See" was even funnier than his fictional stories, and asked about the availability of a paperback edition.
There was no response until 1996, when he replied that a paperback had recently been published, wrapped in one of the worst covers he had seen in his entire career.
Losing would "create precedent that fair use of online material in a news report is not a copyright violation," which is the whole crux of this joke. "Losing" the court case would force AP to change their (questionably legal) terms of use.
The anti-trust laws are for when that power gets abused -- when one uses their monopoly power as leverage over another market. In the case of Microsoft, by bundling IE with Windows, they were using their OS monopoly to crush a competitor in the market for web browsers.
None of this applies to Apple because they have nothing close to a mobile monopoly. If they did, the lawsuits would be over their position as gatekeepers of the entire market for mobile apps.