I like low prices as much as the next guy, but what you need to realize about this case is that Apple's behavior (legal or not) disrupted a market where Amazon was taking a loss on every book sold to drown out competition, intending to monopolize the market and then charge whatever they damn well pleased once their dominance was permanently established. By forcing Amazon to make a profit, they actually save the DOJ from having to step in with an antitrust suit against them in a few years time.
I appreciate trying to recast Amazon as the plotting culprit here. So play that out. Amazon dominates the Ebook market by that strategy, kills off all competitors, then socks it to us by- say- doubling or tripling prices. What then? Apple and other competitors could step into the market and undercut Amazon's new, much higher prices and kill their monopoly. While Amazon does control how it prices it's products, it doesn't control the products themselves. If suddenly, Amazon decided to triple all prices right now, it's consumers would just shop elsewhere. If there was no elsewhere at the moment, there would soon be many elsewheres popping up looking to take advantage of the huge opportunity provided by Amazon's decision to jack up prices.
Flip it. Can't we see Apple as the Amazon of eMusic? IMO, I think so. Does that stop upstart music competitors from competing against Apple with lower prices and apparently making a profit at lower prices? Lots of other players have music at lower prices than Apple. If Apple suddenly flexed it's dominance on music by doubling or tripling prices, would we all keep paying up or would more of us go buy our music elsewhere?
There's a big difference between the classic monopoly concept where a company can completely control the flow of a resource (oil, telephone service, etc) and the idea of a retailing monopoly in that the retailer that dominates to kill all competition and then jacks up prices to take advantage will essentially create new competitors who can offer the great consumer appeal of much lower prices. If that was Amazon's grand plan, Apple could have rolled out ebook in that scenario and quickly take a lot of share from the monopoly of that Amazon... make it's target margin and probably then some and not do what they did here.
If you want to talk retail monopoly, think Walmart. What seems to be the #1 focus of Walmart from a consumer's point of view? What makes many e-tailers shop Amazon instead of many other e-tailing stores? Both are built on a price-competing model. Both could indeed have plans to eventually double or triple prices if they ever achieve a complete monopoly, but as soon as they do the shoppers will look for lower-priced alternatives that would pop up right at that point. This is especially true in a cheap infrastructure e-tailing business like Ebooks.
Can this really happen? Think of absolutely unique products like maybe a patented pharma product. Price in U.S.: say $10/pill. Price in- say- Canada: say $2/pill. Anyone buy their medicine from Canada if they had the option? Of course. Need some serious dental work near the Mexican border. $5K or $10K US or drive across the border and get the same for $500 or $1000. Anyone drive across the border for dental services? It's thriving.
Lastly, by saving the DOJ from an anti-trust suit in a few year's time, Apple's actions replaced that legal burden with the current suit underway now.