Sam, I agree that MS are fond of locking things down but where's the evidence that Apple are? The evidence to the contrary is that Apple have pressurised the music business to remove DRM, have opened up the iTunes Plus store with literally millions of DRM free tracks and that people can play un-DRMed music from just about anywhere on their iPods. If Apple are so fond of locking down music and enforcing DRM then why these moves towards openness and away from DRM? As evidence of this openness just look at how flawlessly the Amazon music store integrates with iTunes and the iPod.

I think there is a reason Apple are staying quiet though, they need the record labels on-side. If there's no music to sell then the iTunes store becomes a great white elephant!

Also, unlike Microsoft Apple do not pay the record labels for each music player sold.

Bart.