I’ve know Bob Frankston for many years — Bob has been one of our industry’s original thinkers, and he even did a stint at Microsoft after helping to invent spreadsheets and many other pieces of software. He recently wrote me:

It’s unfortunate that Microsoft seems to be patterning itself after the world of the iPod in which the users are considered consumers rather than contributors.

The old Microsoft treated everyone as a developer but Microsoft’s intelligence-bearing genes are being winnowed out in a truly Dilbertesque process. I accidentally ran the Media Center instead of the Media Player and I was scared because that piece of pandering retro-TV crap seems to the bastard child of Ms. Bob and Clippie with a nauseating dose of DRM and PLH (Pretty Little Head — as in, don’t worry your PLH) obfuscation. I see Apple as being more sinister because pandering is so very cute. The scariest was watching a TV show about new technology including the kids first MP3 player – this poor girl was moving back and forth to the music as if in a trance — better opiate them when their young rather than risk them
becoming anything other than a passive receptacle for Jobs products. And poor Sony is sitting there wondering how they got beaten at their own game.