Sometimes it’s better just to let the other guy talk: he may just say enough to make you look better than him. So John Gruber see Steve “Monkeyboy” Ballmer on the iPod and DRM media:
Microsoft’s successful operating systems and office software monopolies came about largely because they’ve been successful selling them in the corporate market. But the corporate market is irrelevant when it comes to computer/entertainment convergence.
This isn’t about “I like Apple” and “I hate Microsoft” it’s simply an observation that successful consumer platforms are designed to make consumers happy, not clueless entertainment industry executives. The film industry fought against the VCR, but it became wildly successful anyway, because consumers loved it. (And it’s worth noting that Hollywood now makes more than 50 percent of its revenue from VHS and DVD sales — their opposition wasn’t just futile, it was foolish.) The TV industry largely despises TiVo — but people love it.
If Microsoft plans to build home entertainment systems that are designed to please entertainment industry executives, I don’t see how they expect their products to appeal to actual people.
Selling to corporations and institutions is easy, no doubt about it: one or a few decision-makers, some flexibility with discounts and arm-twisting of hardware vendors, and you’re done. But home users are different: it’s their money and their expectations. It’s their time that will be wasted with fiddly details that the vendors doesn’t care about. People buy a Windows PC because it’s what they’re used to at the office: increasingly, what they’re getting used to is frustration over unreliability and poor performance. They may not want to perpetuate that at home. As long as Ballmer and his flunkeys think of home users as some undifferentiated mass of office clerks, they’ll lose sales and so will their partners.