PriceSCAN Blog

Apple gets a pass here because a) it long ago screwed up its own plans to subjugate the computer industry, and b) the company's current efforts to control content distribution are forgiven in light of the fact that iPods are just so darn neat. And there's always been something about that Apple logo that says "hey, we're just ex-hippies trying to stick it to the man" (just like the Beatles' label of the same name – you remember when these two nonconformist icons retained white-shoed corporate counsel so they could engage in multi-million dollar trademark litigation).
Now Microsoft seeks to seduce the world's youth into accepting the Zune's DRM-throttled vision of music-sharing (see "The Zune: Microsoft's Little Brown Lump Of DRM-Enforcing Digital Joy"). They may be forgetting more than the fact that many young people don't live to beam limited play promos to each other so they can shill for major labels. At the end of the day, Microsoft has been most successful when it can leverage its control of the operating system to gain dominance in other markets and thus crush early innovators (e.g. Netscape and the Apple of yore). If Redmond finds a way to integrate its content sales directly into Vista, for example, then iTunes could actually face its first serious rival. Now given the iPod's lock-in effect (consider all the cars out there with iPod-proprietary docks) knocking Jobs off his throne is a very tall order. But he more than anyone should know how dangerous Microsoft can be when it kicks off its Birkenstocks and gets in touch with its inner Death Star.