Mark Bernstein is exactly right here. This is a matter of Apple being able to control their own destiny, and not being blackmailed by other companies…

John Gruber’s recent analysis of Apple’s policy is, I think, almost exactly correct. He is right to pinpoint PowerPlant/Metrowerks as a source of Apple’s anxiety. (Tinderbox is still struggling with that one.) Java was another bad memory for Apple. An even worse memory, I think, is OpenDoc – the platform on which Apple bet the company, and lost.

But Gruber forgets the emotional memory behind all of this.

In 1997, Apple was on the ropes. Every trade press story speculated that Apple would soon go out of business. Apple’s computers were toys, hapless, hopeless. The only hope seemed to be that Microsoft’s antitrust problems would extend the struggling company’s life a year or two and something might turn up.

(See the Rest of the Story at Mark Bernstein: Platform Control.)