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Story: Microsoft's Ballmer: Digital device for the living room at 'tipping point'
Posted by: Mark Sobkow (Monday 4 October 2004, 2:00 PM)
While I often agree with the messages that Steve Ballmer puts out for Microsoft, I think he may be underplaying the importance of Apple and OS/X.
Where Microsoft "has DRM", Apple just took a security envelope and wrapped it around an existing audio standard (AAC.) Both play games quite well. Both run MS Office. Both have a nice UI. Both can be purchased in bulk for the enterprise.
All that really holds Apple back is slow market uptake, and that seems to be changing as people realize you can get your core desktop business software on a Mac and still have industry-standard API's to enable cross-platform native computing.
Those cross-platform API's are really the biggest thorn in Microsoft's side. As a developer I wouldn't care that I'm working on a Windows box if I didn't have to mess around with so many #ifdef's or stick with Java in order to get cross-platform programming options.
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