It's clear you didn't almost fail school because you read the news too often!

The reason why Apple folks care about MS entering a new market is because they worry about MS getting more mindshare with the computer buying public. In case you haven't been watching MS was found guilty in a US Federal court (or was it Supreme court?) of using monopoly power illegally to gain control over other software markets. Even now MS is using it's ill gotten gains to support the Xbox over the next two years until it breaks even. Those illegal profits are helping them even today. Plus MS wants to leverage those ill gotten gains to muscle in on the edu market, a place where they don't have a monopoly. Remember "monopoly" is not a cute board game with funny money, its an illegal enterprise where companies lose billions, even if they play by the rules.

When MS gets more mindshare, it means less for the rest of them, including my favorite fruit company, Apple.