The New York Times > Business > Media & Advertising > RealNetworks Seeks a Musical Alliance With Apple

What disturbs me about this article (other than agreeing with Jobs likely rebuff) is the comment:

"Apple is not into interoperability," said an industry executive with connections to both the computer and music industries. "Steve's bet is that he can beat the big guys, Sony and Microsoft - with better marketing."

While it's true that Apple is "not into interoperability" when it comes to hardware core components, (iPod is a closed system, as are most of their systems) they have tried to use more standards-based systems: Samba, Apache, XML, and Darwin is "open source" (sort of).

Also, Steve isn't just about marketing. Anyone who's used a Mac knows that it's just a better machine. Like a Jaguar is a better machine than a Ford Taurus. The cooler marketing is a byproduct, and yes, it works. So?
- posted by Victor Agreda, Jr. @ 8:26 PM