Apple has been using the "only do what we want you to do" philosophy for years. It's why we call Macs "Baby's First Computers".
Well, that's not necessarily true of their Mac PCs. The big thing holding back what you can do on Macs is the reality that developers just don't care about making their software compatible for them.
It's worth noting that Mac is seemingly heading in the same direction. Not so much merging OS's but the App Store-only part. With Mountain Lion, by default you can only install programs by developers who are signed up with the Mac App Store.
But like Pike and Linux, I love OSX but I just really got sick of setting up games for it. So back to Windows, I am~