I think you're right. Apple is daisy-chaining each one of its products to get more and more users. The iPod/iPhone requires iTunes, which requires Quicktime a

I think you're right. Apple is daisy-chaining each one of its products to get more and more users. The iPod/iPhone requires iTunes, which requires Quicktime and Webkit, and which (on one occasion) was bundled with Safari. Because Apple has a captive audience, their usual aesthetic of hiding everything complex and letter the power user discover things has given over to the profit motive. Apple has an incentive to showcase features like the Genius Sidebar right off the bat, because Genius links into the iTunes Music Store. I read an interesting article on Steve Jobs and the original design of the iDVD application: http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/01/28/idvd_hung_out_to_dry_as_apple_pushes_movies_online.html http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/01/28/idvd_hung_out_... The key bit for me was in this quote: Evangelist and a group of Astarte developers described pitching the simplified app concept to Steve Jobs. "Jobs never glanced at their presentation," the article noted. "Instead, he walked up to a whiteboard and drew a square. This is the program, he said. Users will drag their movies here to create DVD menus. Then they'll click 'burn.' That's it. 'I don't want to hear anything about drawers or pop-out' windows, he said." Seems like Steve needs to take his own hypercritical hatchet to iTunes. (http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits/2009/05/hypercritical.ars http://arstechnica.com/staff/fatbits/2009/05/hypercritical.a...). It would be just in time for iTunes X (pron. iTunes ten).