Wow. It's almost sickening to see the inversion of the principles of software freedom that Apple is able to get away with and not get criticized in the fanboi community.Irrelevant. Regardless of whether I am a fanboi, my question stands.
Geeks have been lambasting Microsoft for merely having proprietary formats for 20 years.
Yes, but also irrelevant. I don't like Microsoft (or any company's) proprietary formats, but I think they should have the right to create and use them.
They even got fined for billions of dollars just for not documenting their protocols well enough.
That both annoys and pleases me, but it's not relevant.
Now Apple plays god and controls every single application that can ever even run on a platform.
Yes. It's an Apple platform. They ought to be allowed to. (What kind of attack is "stop, you're playing God" anyway? Kids "Play God" in sandpits, that's no reason to ban sand pits.)
They make developers sign NDAs that prevent them even talking about technical details of the platform publicly.
Yes, and they ought to be allowed to do this. I don't personally enjoy it or think it fosters a great community, but that's also not relevant.
They do these things that are the antithesis of everything the open software community have been trying to achieve for the last 15 years
Where and why do the open source community come into this at all? The open source community pushes its own agenda, not no agenda.
and not only do people like yourself give it a pass
I give it a pass because I see no reason not to. This doesn't mean I like it and approve of it personally, but I think it should be allowed and acceptable.
you go out of your way to stand up and defend it.
It needs defending; most of the attacks are plain silly.