UPDATE: Actually, no, I will say something.

What this sounds like to me, more than any real principle asserting itself, is a convenient pretext that people are jumping on for hating Apple all over again. I don't think people think of it that way, themselves—but I think that's the psychological effect underlying it. People who have been robbed of the good practical reasons against switching to the Mac (or at least just trying one out) are now grabbing for whatever looks like a good excuse to get them off the hook. Glenn's halfway tongue-in-cheek comments seem to bear that out.

I mean, what if we held all companies (like, say, Microsoft) to the same standard that's now being applied to Apple? Why is everyone so willing to put up with all Microsoft's excesses, when one newsworthy (if legally and ethically marginal at best) entanglement involving Apple is enough to make a person who had been considering a Mac drop it like a hot potato?

We get all indignant when people excuse the Taliban or Hamas their charming indigenous murdering ways but are enraged by Abu Ghraib, right?

True, this is something Apple could have handled far better, or certainly timed far better. But I think it's illustrative of the dynamic in the marketplace to see how much of a motes-vs-beams imbalance there is in the discourse, and how much ground Apple has to cover in people's hearts and minds.