[jpxxx]

That is absurdly limited thinking. Ponder that iCloud was invented to ensure the following scenario: that a typical user could not, in any reasonable scenario, irrevocably lose the user-state associated with their purchased applications.

Apple is gunning hard for a market worth one trillion dollars, not Marco Arment. He is inconsequential collateral damage in Apple's race to a 100% managed computing experience.

[Androsynth]

Thats no different than Microsoft in the 90's. The business goals are different but the strategy of getting there is the same.

[jpxxx]

I don't feel this situation is the same.

Microsoft didn't win for two decades by nibbling small potatoes off of everyone else's plate, they won by persecuting swallowing entire industries that were evolving rapidly. Word processing, fileserving, WWW access, telephony, video gaming, SQL, e-mail, ad infinitum...

Instapaper is not an industry of this scope - it's a single webbrowsing feature.

[Androsynth]

Go read the top comment in this thread, cstross did a pretty good job of explaining it.