The Coolness Factor Spring 2013

I am probably just paranoid and don’t want to start a false rumors, nor plant  harmful ideas in minds but I wonder if there is a way developers can cause their programs, apps and devices to crash upon detecting the presence of products of their competition?
To say this is absolutely ridiculous is to deny the extent to which aggressive companies can go and just how fiercely some may take and address the challenge of competition.
This type of anti-competitive behaviour would certainly violate an unwritten Code of Ethics but there is no penalty for that.
If this is real it may be unfair and steps areprobably always taken to sense and obfuscate sensitive code and to derail, delay or prevent these types of efforts but in the real world preparing for non-existent attacks is at best impractical if not straight-up illogical.