@Ian Ferguson

"even Linux comes with bundles of free applications - you could argue that the authors are getting wads of free advertising from Linux installations and Linux distros should be completely unbranded and not come with anything bundled"

That's a little different. Linux actually comes with nothing bundled - it's just a kernel. Red Hat, Canonical et al provide 'distributions' - these are innately 'bundles' so it's hard to object to the bundling. Even the default shell is not 'part of Linux' but a sort of bundled application (you can run Linux boxes entirely without bash if you want).

Since the bundled applications are provided for free by their developer communities and often not advertised in any way other than this bundling (and in the majority of cases, not actually installed by default anyway, just made available), it's hard to see how the Linux situation parallels Microsoft's habitual strategic injection of second-rate content into Windows systems.