What a load of shit.

If you happen to buy an mp3 player that isn't made by apple, not only does it not "just work" it doesn't work AT ALL and the reason is that Apple hath forbade it. People who want it to be easy and just work usually also don't want to have the technical knowledge to understand that; the fact that they mostly buy ipods and use itunes is a triumph of marketing and lockin, not successful interface design.

"Just works" is not incompatible with open standards; in fact, the 2 go hand in hand. Despite all of the complaints about web standards, the web and the internet in general are the single most successful example of "just works" device and software interoperability in the history of engineering, and it's all based on open standards.

And the only reason they require it is because flash performance is horrible. (at least for YouTube and Hulu, I don't know much about iPlayer). My 6.5 year old system can play anything up to and including 720HD video just fine, but even a 320x240 flash video causes the CPU to grind.