I wasn't replying to you in terms of the multitasking.
MS has never contributed to the open source community as much as apple, and they are always aiming at a close source solution to tie people down: see silverlight, see wmv, and tons of other tecs. Actually were did ms give something back to the fos community, I can't seem to recall.
This whole closed business is, like I said, a buzz word from tech pundits to bash apple for no other reason that they made the app store such a huge success against everyone of those shortsighted know alls predictions and expectations. And now everyone is going down the app store route in mobile devices. What exactly would you buy from a brick and mortar store for a device that has no cd input, would you stick a flash in port just to get something you can download online in an app store in minutes? Would that make sense. Mobile devices are different beasts, they are much less secure, and they are far more exposed having to join all sorts of public wireless networks. Opening up any app without prior consent from the manufacturer is a pandora's box. And still apple's "consent" isn't restrictive at all, it's a simple safeguard against the havoc of opening up a mobile device to every sort of malware from every developer in the globe with an eye to manipulate or steal personal data. Haven't we had enough of this in the desktop? If it's worked so badly in far less exposed systems how could this anything goes work well for mobile devices. Do you think apple are doing it for the 30% cut? Itunes and the app store are break even affairs, apple is a hardware manufacturer and they are merely supporting their hardware sales with them, it's not that they make much money from them, it's not about them making money. It's about giving the developers a platform from where they can easily reach the most people they can so the developers can make money and consequently develop great apps and make apple's devices more appealing to the buyer.
That's all there is to it to me.