Microsoft versus Apple: The Rematch

With so much at stake and no viable solution, it's easy to understand how we got into this mess. The question is how to untangle the media knot. Bill Gates believes that a combination of Palladium and the Windows Media Data Session Toolkit, Microsoft's version of DRM, will win back the hearts and minds of an incredulous Hollywood. But if Microsoft switches sides in the DRM debate, and Palladium is as Machiavellian as its critics claim, will users abandon Windows like rats abandoning a sinking ship? That's the real question!

Figure 9.3: The iTunes Web site

Ironically, the first glimmer of hope for consumers since the 1999 Napster fiasco was the launch of Apple's iTunes store in 2003. The revolutionary 99- cents -per-song music download site set the music world, the Internet, and DRM on their collective ear! Leave it to Steve Jobs to get things right. Bill Gates' old nemesis has been on a winning streak. While running Pixar Studios, producer of digital animation classics such as Toy Story , Jobs also found time to rescue and reinvent his old alma mater, Apple. First came the transparent iMac, next the revolutionary iPod, then the redesigned LCD iMac, and finally, Jobs' Hollywood coup. The iTunes store single-handedly reopened the floodgates of delivery on demand that had been in a logjam ever since Napster!

Figure 9.4: The New Media king? Photo by Moshe Brakha