Apple does interoperability really well. To a large extent they make it easy on themselves by specifying both hardware and software (in the case of their PCs, only a small sub-set of Intel hardware), but they do make it all work together. In contrast, it seems as though Microsoft's offerings could just as well have been from different companies as difficult as it is to get them to work together. Vista does a lot better at seeing Windows Mobile devices as media devices, capable of content synching, but it's still way behind Apple's integration of iPod, iTunes, etc. What Microsoft seems to need is a whole set of people whose job would be to make sure various product lines work together (as forethought rather than afterthought). It does seem ironic that Apple, who has always suffered from "Not Invented Here" is actually making steps toward making Macs play well with PCs.
I'm actually not that fond of Apple products, even though I'm running a "Hacintosh" for my daughter to use. Apples big selling point is also their biggest drawback. They lead users by the hand so much that it's a major pain if you want to go a different direction. As an example, Time Machine, their new backup software is quite a nice piece of work. Once you tell it where to store the backup data, you can go backward and within most applications and find your documents as they were before each and every change. However, it fairly quickly fills up backup space with what are probably mostly extraneous copies and, while it works well for documents, it doesn't seem to address being able to restore the full system after a hard-drive failure or something of that sort.
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by controlling the hardware, the software, and ultimately the customer, they're able to innovate much faster than Windows Mobile can
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Very true. I ultimately like Microsoft's approach better as it allows for a far greater depth of devices, but it's easy to see the advantages of Apple's tighter control.