Apple goes all Microsoft on the market....

Apple is deciding that it is cool to follow in Microsoft's footsteps...what irony!

From Holman Jenkins in the WSJ...

Don't look now but this may be the year when Apple's market cap does the unthinkable and surpasses Microsoft's. Congratulations will be in order but so will condolences. For a company preoccupied with products is in danger of becoming a company preoccupied with strategy. And by "strategy," we mean zero-sum maneuvering versus hated rivals....

The iPad may not be the best Web-browsing machine simply because Apple refuses to support Flash, which delivers 75% of the video on the Web....let's not mince words: The iPad looks like a device optimized to patronize the iTunes store....

And what about Apple's decision to exclude Flash? Apple and its supporters stake out aesthetic and philosophical grounds...Uh huh. Flash would also allow iPhone and iPad users to consume video and other entertainment without going through iTunes....

Steve Jobs, that Apple is perfectly within its rights to do so. But the thing to notice is that Apple is making a strategic choice to cut off its users from a huge amount of Web content....

Here's the bigger worry. Apple may be succumbing to the seductive temptations of "network effects," in which the all-consuming goal becomes getting its mobile devices into more and more hands simply for the purpose of locking more and more users into iTunes....

Network effects can be a path to power and riches, but (as Microsoft has shown) much of the proceeds can also end up being squandered on defensive and paranoid attempts to secure the privileged position....