After reading though these comments, all I can think is - yeah, here's an issue where default Linux should do a better job - one on par, at least, with the latest Windows/Mac OS.

Optimize your default distros so us average schmucks don't need to fiddle around under the hood. I have tried repeatedly to use Linux on my netbook - and even setting battery life aside it's always a colossal hassle - ending up (after many steps) with advice about recompiling the kernel, etc.

You really believe competition is good, right? And I'm sure you're fair minded enough to admit that you are not going to win every usability feature just kinda because, right?

Get power usage nailed down tight. It will payoff HUGE in the brave new mobile world.

All of the snipers are wrong here, and very used to the cynical default stance of Slashdot types, evaluating the latest new thing in terms of what was known before ...

Eventually somebody, somebody very much like this dude will use the mash-up format so prodigiously well that they will transform everything. What keeps being forgotten is that they have a library of the worlds media at their fingertips.

When that breakthrough artist happens, we will be forced to throw out the rules, and even the copyright lawyers will simply give up in amazement over the sheer awe of what has been created.

This is a format ripe for a bonafide precedent-shattering innovator. A Mozart or Picasso or pick-your-genius will turn the rules on their ass, and nothing will be the same afterward.

The rest of you can snark and quibble along until that happens (which will be soon) -- and then you will claim that you were in on it, that you expected it.

Apple isn't after the business market by design, and Microsoft knows this. But it's likely MS has conducted research, and they can see that the iPhone has even attracted the attention of the high-end market that uses MS mobile applications on "smart" phones - a market that isn't as locked in as the desktop users. They likely don't want any of that base to defect, and this is done by jumping up and down about the importance of Office (even though it isn't as important in a mobile setting).

It's a preemptive move to hold what they've got.