Be is different. Gass e and his team have gone to school in the art of platform management. He knows there has to be teeth in his statement that he won't compete with developers. The only way to assure that is to put a limit on the size of his company. If their cash model doesn't allow them to compete with developers, then we can be fairly sure they won't interfere, and will probably support developer's products.
Impotence is the best insurance.
Gass e's track record in this area is good but not perfect. But Gass e was a member of Sculley's team that let Microsoft have the high ground with no contest. I trust him because he understands how platforms grow, and won't make the same mistakes that Apple's management would probably make. Make a new operating system that combines the best of the Macintosh with the best of Sun's new network computer architecture. Reading the industry weeklies, it seems that corporate developers are using Java as a way of expressing their dissatisfaction with Microsoft, but it will be a short-lived rebellion.