The idea that Apple did some disservice to Dave Winer is one such idea. Frontier's lack of acceptance and eventual relegation as a niche product has less to do with Apple and much, much more to do with Dave Winer and his utter intransigence.

I can still remember a long dialog that developed on one of the AppleScript mailing lists that involved several developers, myself included, telling Dave, at Dave's behest mind you, that the syntax and interface for Frontier was far too difficult to use. Hence our reticence to use it over AppleScript.

Dave's response was to argue that we were wrong and the the syntax and UI factors in the app were simple to use and didn't need changing.

Frontier was a rather nasty piece of work written and promoted by a rather nasty piece of work. Hence its staggering lack of popularity.

No amount of work by Apple could have ever done as much damage to Frontier's fortunes as a few conversations with Dave Winer.

So lets place the blame where it belongs, at Dave's feet, and quite blaming Apple.