This is a pity piece.

I am an Apple Shareholder - thus an owner of Apple.
Apple is doing fine, thank you.

Apple is never about FREE ideas - that is what open-source GPL-3 people do. Apple will do open source when it is useful. But it will not give away ideas if that will lead to its demise. Apple is so prolific in creating things other people want to copy Apple. Microsoft looks to Apple for ideas. Linux people look to Apple for ideas. Apple has to patent its ideas otherwise people will steal from Apple.

Apple always - under Steve Jobs - tries to create the best products it can. It cares about its products. This is easily seen in how well designed and how easy to use its products are. It takes enormous amount of work to make something well designed and easy to use.

Apple is not an expert in everything. It can make mistakes. Obviously, just as anyone else.

Apple is to make a profit. No more bleeding billions of dollars as in the past. I would be happy for Apple to make a profit and forget about marketshare. It doesn't have to make marketshare. However, many times good products will create their own market and gain marketshare without much work. Apple's products are so good they are the only corporation which can create its own markets and expand on existing ones without much advertising.

Apple does not own the music or video it sells. Duh. The music companies and media companies own them. Apple is at their mercy when it comes to selling the product - as is every other company. After all, if you own the product, someone can't sell it without your permission. Thus DRM exists.

HFS+ has been the standard disk format for Mac OS X for years. Of course, Time Machine is going to be optimized for HFS+ or even require it. Duh. It's not going to support some weird disk format. It is not even going to support Microsoft's proprietary patented disk format - for which Apple would need to pay Microsoft a license. So quit whining. If Time Machine doesn't do what you want, get some other backup program. Time Machine is made for the beginniner who wants simplicity. It isn't meant for the geek you are - who already has an NAS. If you were a smarter geek, you would immediately recognize this and use your favorite program - or even better, WRITE YOUR OWN PROGRAM.

Mac OS X has a lot of utilities I will never use - they are too geeky. They are there if I want to use it. There are a lot of utilities I won't use because they are meant for the beginner. But you have the choice of using what you want or writing your own - after all, the programming tools come with Mac OS X for FREE.