WASHINGTON: Call it a “walled garden” or an ecosystem, but at the heart of Thursday’s blockbuster US lawsuit against Apple are the many ways the company gets customers to remain faithful to its products.

Apple versus PCs

Very early on in its nearly half-century history, Apple made a decision that its products were to stand out alone and shouldn’t be combined with products from other companies.

With fans touting its better design and easier interface, Apple computers often drew the vitriol of PC users who equated its products as a technological straitjacket, denying users flexibility to add software and features as they saw fit.

This ethos never left Apple and very much informs the accusations brought against Apple: the company built by Steve Jobs is like the Hotel California, you can check out but you can never leave.

OS or nothing

At Apple, hardware is always the center of its universe and before the advent of the iPhone, the pole star was the Mac computer that wouldn’t run on Microsoft’s world-dominating Windows operating system, or use a mouse that wasn’t made for Apple.

Apple’s software is specifically designed for its devices and intended to offer seamless integration. You simply are not allowed to run any other operating system than Apple’s OS on Apple devices. The two are as one.