> Prior to the iPhone / iOS, Apple would have happily built in support for something like Google Cast
I really don't think you can assume this. For example, a long time ago in computer years, Apple rolled out "Yellow Box for Windows" which was a way to get NeXTStep apps running on Windows http://www.shawcomputing.net/resources/apple/os_pictures/ybn... as part of Rhapsody Developer Release 2 (this was a prerelease OS X)... and then promptly ditched it.
Being able to develop once and then deploy to both OS X and Windows sounds great to developers, but think about this: If you had access to Mac apps from a Windows machine, then why would you buy a Mac, when Apple is competing on quality and not price? It'd be a win for app developers but a big "lose" for Apple.
So why would Apple have ever built a way to cast to Google Cast if they already had an AppleTV product that wasn't competing on price with Google Cast? (AppleTV's are great, btw)
I really don't think you can assume this. For example, a long time ago in computer years, Apple rolled out "Yellow Box for Windows" which was a way to get NeXTStep apps running on Windows http://www.shawcomputing.net/resources/apple/os_pictures/ybn... as part of Rhapsody Developer Release 2 (this was a prerelease OS X)... and then promptly ditched it.
Being able to develop once and then deploy to both OS X and Windows sounds great to developers, but think about this: If you had access to Mac apps from a Windows machine, then why would you buy a Mac, when Apple is competing on quality and not price? It'd be a win for app developers but a big "lose" for Apple.
So why would Apple have ever built a way to cast to Google Cast if they already had an AppleTV product that wasn't competing on price with Google Cast? (AppleTV's are great, btw)