Why Apple stands alone (and why that's just fine by them)

Recently, I've been thinking about Apple's relationship to other companies. But first, let me give some background to this thought process.
When Google first released Android, Apple was a little mad. And by a little mad, I mean really, really p***ed. In fact, Steve Jobs told his biographer, Walter Issacson, that he was willing to spend every penny of Apple's if it meant killing off Android. He believed that Android was iOS stolen from Apple, and stated in no uncertain terms that he was "willing to go thermonuclear war on this". This is fact.
Now, the article that I took this (I'll choose to call it "heavy borrowing") and the following list's information from theorizes that there are two ways that Apple is warring against Google.

1. Copyright wars by proxy. Basically, suing Google directly doesn't do anything - Google can afford to go to court with Apple, so what ends up happening is cases that Apple files against Google (which Apple would have to file in US courts) take years to be resolved and even then, Google just makes a couple of small changes to Android to resolve the cases where the court found in Apple's favor, and Android continues its existence unimpaired. Even worse, during the time that all these cases are dragging on, device manufacturers are still happily developing Android-based systems, confident that Google will protect Android, and by extension, them. In other words, if Apple sues Google directly, Google will win. So this won't work for Apple.
   No, instead, Apple chooses to sue random Android device manufacturers, at random times, in random countries. I believe Samsung was the first target of these lawsuits, but don't quote me on that. Basically, what this does is it adds a fear factor to Android: the possibility of being randomly sued by Apple is now a required thing to consider when thinking about making an Android device. In fact, I'm fairly certain that Jobs actually mentioned this type of "war" specifically, although again, don't quote me on that. That Apple has done this is fact.
   But as this article speculates, this isn't really what Jobs meant by "thermonuclear war". This is war, but it's not thermonuclear.
2. Here's what the article (and I) think Jobs really meant: the utter elimination of Google across iOS, and thus, all of Apple's mobile products, plus Apple TV to boot. (Don't get me wrong, the Mac is very successful - as measured by the fact that it's now starting to be targeted by malware - but Apple's mobile products far surpass Mac sales. That being said, if OS X starts to move the direction of iOS - see Lion and Mountain Lion - Google could be eliminated from OS X too. Keep in mind that most of this is speculation.)
   Consider the evidence:
• Siri is a serious threat to Google, and someone (I forget who) from Google has actually admitted that Google is worried about Siri, as users' instinct to Google for things becomes replaced by their instinct to ask Siri. This is fact.
• In iOS 6, the Maps application is no longer powered by Google Maps. Instead, Apple has created their own Maps service. This is also fact.
• Apple has created Find My Friends, which very well could kill off Google Latitude. If location sharing takes off in the future, Apple may have a leg up with Find My Friends (and especially its good integration into iOS). The creation of Find My Friends is fact, but the rest of this is speculation.
• Apple will probably use iCloud to replace Google's cloud. Many services that Google provides are also now provided by iCloud, and iCloud's implementation is often more desirable if you only use Apple products simply because of the level of integration - Google could never hope to integrate their cloud so well into iOS, even if only because Apple just doesn't allow it. The fact that Google can't integrate as well because Apple won't let them is fact.
• iMessage may, if not replace, seriously challenge Google Talk, and to a lesser extent, Gmail. Also remember that iCloud will give you a free webmail account.

So that's the end of the background, and thus, the end of my heavy borrowing from the aforementioned article.
And thus, here are my thoughts on the subject. The rest of this blog post will be pure speculation and theorizing on my part; sorry it's not extremely coherent.
I believe that the article is totally right: Apple is almost definitely eliminating Google from their platform(s). But I'll take it one step further: my belief is that it's not just Google that Apple's after, it's every company that they've ever cooperated with. Apple just chooses to focus a ton on Google, well, basically out of spite. Now let me explain what I mean by that.
In my opinion, Apple's business strategy has always been to create a great, wonderful, and to quote Steve Jobs, magical end product, and to market that product brilliantly and trust that users will want to buy it because it's so great. To this end they innovate and innovate, and they control as much of their production lines as possible; this is why Steve's attention to aesthetic detail was so valuable - for example the first unibody Mac. This is why Hackintoshes exist. You don't see computers that are required for Windows to run on - you see specs that Windows needs to run on.
This is because Microsoft's strategy is not to create a great, wonderful, magical end product - their strategy is to spread across a variety of devices - basically to dominate the market through varied adoption. This type of strategy, betting on wide adoption, can be compared to Android. Android does this exact same thing, only lest extremist to the "spread everywhere" goal. Now, I'm not saying that Android devices and Windows devices are not good, useful, or elegant, or that they cannot be any of these things. I'm just saying that these qualities are not fundamental to a Windows device, because that's not what Microsoft has chosen to focus on.
These qualities are fundamental to Apple devices, though, because that's what Apple chooses to focus on. Both of these strategies work fairly effectively. As Apple emerges into a mainstream technology vendor (see malware starting to target Apple devices), we'll see exactly which one of these strategies is more effective, probably in the form of which company (Microsoft or Apple) gets killed off first. Anyway, back to why Hackintoshes exist - they exist because Apple, at the expense of not being able to spread everywhere, across all devices, has chosen to be able to control their entire production line, so that they can optimize that product in more places and have more control over it so that they can make a better, prettier product. And I think because of this, Apple needs to sever ties with other companies in order to follow their business strategy. For example, take Maps. Apple can't afford to depend on Google for map data, because then Apple is restricted by what Google provides through APIs. Apple doesn't control it, therefore Apple can't innovate on it, therefore Apple can't create the best end product that they think is possible.
This also explains Flash: with the advent of HTML5 and friends, Flash is admittedly becoming a dated technology. But more than that, Apple just couldn't afford to have that loose end. They weren't sure that they could get Flash to work well on their system well enough, especially if it was mostly Adobe developing the plugin. To try it once and then remove it later would be a regression. So Flash was cut loose and banned from the platform.
Now, there's one last argument that you could make that I can think of at the moment: what about Twitter integration in iOS 5 and Facebook integration in iOS 6? Here's the thing: this integration is not fundamental to the platform. It's like an added bonus, like if you get served a slice of cake from the edge of the cake, so it has extra frosting. Twitter and Facebook are basically just popular things that make the platform more useful, and to make that functionality available is all Apple's concerned about, because they don't really design the functionality in any way. They just expose it more deeply in the operating system by giving you some APIs to use the global social accounts. Design and features is Twitter/Facebook's problem(s).
I think this is the true logic process that defines why Apple fundamentally stands alone, and why they're fine with that. Even glad.