Microsoft Goes All Apple On Us

Microsoft has been issuing guidelines on computer hardware styling to manufacturers for its upcoming rollout of Vista. Microsoft gets regularly accused of being an over-controlling behemoth in its industry, some of it well deserved. However, Apple is often under-criticized (in my opinion) about being an even bigger control freak. But with only a tiny percentage of the market, it's possible that no one cares. I guess the point I'm trying to make here is that Microsoft is learning (or as Steve Jobs would complain, copying) from Apple again:

"Apple Computer has shown that if you control the software and you control the hardware, you can make the two fit harmoniously into a beautiful, elegant package," said Don Norman, a former Apple executive who now consults with Microsoft

For those of us a little more intimately tied to the computer bidness than the average person, Apple is well regarded as being an uber-gatekeeper of everything that touches or even comes near an Apple system. Apple has been in scraps with people who 'discovered' a way to put tunes sold from other servies on the iPod, something Apple fiercely covets.