Why did they not name it Apple Juice instead of Airpower? :)
If you're referring to the FaceTime announcement, it was a third party that forced them to keep it closed (from memory).
I feel that Apple knows exactly what it's doing with this feature. There is a strong pull with iMessage for 15-25 year olds in schools, the kind of market something like this will go over pretty well with and potentially create more lock in to their message platform. Along with all the other photo apps that will take advantage of this tech. You could even just look at the Animoji as a tech preview for all the other devs.
Different kind of stranger relation. Renting with its information asymmetry has a huge potential for creating distrust. Did the landlord hide how nasty the neighbors are? Will the tenant vandalize the apartment?
Backpacking/couchsurfing is much more lightweight.
QuickTime didn't need Microsoft's help. Apple didn't update it aside from security fixes for almost eight years.
As an aside do you have any actual evidence that Microsoft made QuickTime more unstable on Windows? Or is that just supposition?
PS - OS 9, like Windows 9x, lacked protected memory. So I have no doubt that a leak or other error in IE for Mac could cause the OS to crash. I hardly think that's really solid proof, just more proof that operating systems without memory protection are inherently a bad idea.
I think your info is a bit outdated (and some incorrect).
Buy a mac (or ignore the Eula and run OS X in a VM), install the dev tools (free), install the app on your iPad (free).
If you want to publish, there's a fee (per year).