I think that lawsuits would not necessarily be a bad thing. While Apple computers and iPods do look nice, I am tired of the company is being portrayed as some kind of heroic foil to that other computer company. Apple is not really that much better of a company; they just have good design skills. I remember reading an article a number of months ago (which, for the life of me, I can not find) harping on how much easier Apple had it with operating system stability because they develop on proprietary hardware (this does not excuse Microsoft Windows, due to the stability of Linux and other Unix-based operating systems).
Let us assume that we are magically transported into some parallel universe where Apple dominates the computer market (to make things interesting, let Mac operating systems - on Apple computers, of course - have the same market share as Windows and vice versa). Is this a better world? No, because Apple would probably be even more monopolistic than Microsoft, and better able to succeed, due to their increased control over hardware (which would make things like DRM much easier).
Of course, Apple does not have the clout to oppress competitors, making this entire discussion academic. It will be interesting to see if the iTunes Music Store becomes the "last online music distributor standing," crushing its competition (which includes a few companies that have the mass-market thing down). A lot of people here at Harvard seem to use iTunes, but I think they were attracted more by subnet sharing features than the cheap music downloads.