My reason for using it, however, is that the debate for years about Apple’s behaviour has been anything by rational an unemotive. The Apple fan base is often religious in their zeal and at depending their beloved company: I don’t think that pointing out Apple’s behaviour as being “not nice” and “pretty unfair” would have the appropriate level of cut through, hence applying the same emotive hyperbole that we’ve seen coming through for years from their apologists (often otherwise upstanding members of the tech community).

“Evil”? That’s very strong, emotive language. Stupid, foolish, anti-competitive, greedy – those are all words that I would use; ‘evil’ implies that they’re maliciously acting this way – in full knowledge of the consequences – just because.

I’m hesitant to attribute to malice what can easily be attributed to incompetence and shortsightedness (and I’m saying that as an iPhone user who dearly enjoys his device).

There’s a reasoned set of points here, and a good conversation to have; IMO taking up entrenched positions about the morality of the entities involved is probably not conducive to that discussion!