Ballmer smackdown continuation

As usual, Mr. Gruber does a better job than most at dissecting a topic, in this case Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer’s crude comments regarding Apple and the iPod:

I’d love to see his source for this. I have no source either, but I’d place a wager with Mr. Ballmer that the most common source of music on most iPods are unencrypted songs legally ripped from CDs. Most iPod users I know own hundreds of CDs; it’d take ages to bootleg the amount of music they already own on CD.

[…]

The point of all this seems to be that Ballmer is saying that Apple can’t lead the way here — where by “here” I’m talking about the convergence between the computer, entertainment, and consumer electronics industries — because the iPod allows for and even encourages the use of non-DRM-protected digital media.

But I would argue that Apple is already leading the way in terms of music — in large part because they don’t enforce draconian DRM measures.