yeah, this is definitely paranoia, but is it possible that apple is trying to make the user experience of itunes in windows frustrating so heavy ipod and iphone users with limited technical knowledge will blame it on windows and think about switching to a mac? It's certainly not a nice practice, but Jobs didn't get the market share he has by being nice either.
I doubt it. At least in the press, a lot of Apple's growth is attributed to 'See how good ipod/itunes works? You'll like OS X.'
I think I recall Apple's own marketing materials leveraging the same 'If you get itunes, you'll get all apple stuff' line.
That all sits on top of the fact that Apple doesn't necessarily seem that excited over selling macs. They're happy selling iphones & ipods that need pc support. It may be a lead in to a mac, but's its a big business in itself. A single long term iphone user may even be worth more then a mac user (kickbacks, music/apps, more frequent upgrading).
First, it's extremely risky. It would expose Apple to class-action suits from users, as well as giving other companies fodder for an anti-competitive practices lawsuit.
Second, this particular error is more likely to hurt Apple's reputation than Microsoft's: The article says that the crashes were observed when plugging in an iPod or launching iTunes. Users will almost certainly associate new crash behavior on an otherwise stable Windows system with their last action: using an Apple product. If Apple really wanted to hurt Windows' reputation, they would have made the crashes random.
The malicious assumption is in the parent post ("Jobs didn't get the market share he has by being nice") -- I'm saying that's unlikely, hence I agree that Apple's problem is most likely due to incompetence.
