As a recent switcher, I can say honestly that each platform has their individual strengths and weaknesses, even on my Desktop pc (windows xp) I havn't even updated IE or WMP for a few years, my Itunes is up-to-date along with mozilla (and when I get around to it safari, though i wonder if it is compatible?)
There are a few major differences that I dont think people are seeing (especially the articles author) Back in the day, windows had "windows only" products, they get away with programs now by claiming to not be involved with development, but windows only monitors, printers, modems, and many other products... Name a peace of mac hardware that is not pc compatible (Aside from thoes running OSX duh...) My Ipod bounces back and forth, as do my external hardrives, mighty mouse, even there fricken computers are now Windows compatible (bootcamp). As for the Itunes, I do see the issue here, and while they may not be 100% fair in this area, here is the reality... NO paid sites to my knoledge are selling 100% open files, meaning even kmarts tunes shop was in WM format... the reality is if the itunes files were all .mp3's the music company would flip out about apple making illigal file sharing even easyer,
Please exscuse my grammer, I am a science major, e-nough said... but the reality here, is apple is a good guy in my book, they seem to be more of a victim to the pc trends... here are some examples of how this is an outragous claim;
I buy a cd, i download to windows, and it converts it to .wm , I download to itunes, it remails in whatever format it came...
I grab a wirless card for my laptop (it doesnt work in my mac, just my gateway... pc only card, however my itunes music ports from my dell and my mbp
I have more but i think you get the point, and I might be starting to ramble, sorry...