[TheDong]

The real difference is utterly unrelated to all that.

The reason Microsoft was on the hook was because it was a software vender forcing its choice. Apple is a hardware+software vendor, and when you own both the software and the hardware, you can make more restrictive choices and are not open to the same class of laws.

it's dumb, but that's the main legal difference here as to why the microsoft case doesn't apply to apple.