Seriously, a lot of these cool developments at Microsoft are not yet available. I know Bert Keely (he’s in my band) on the Tablet PC team, and I admire the technology (particularly ClearType) that has gone into it.

Besides, my point was that the Gates’ demo of Vista at CES — searching, widgets, application switcher, and photo organizer — demonstrate how much Vista emulates Mac OS X. When it finally ships, will Apple leapfrog it with something better? It seems that Apple has plenty of time to do just that. Of course, Apple doesn’t have to support a wide variety of hardware choices, as Microsoft does.

I am also disappointed that Jobs didn’t bring out an alternative to the Media Center at Macworld Expo. However, I think something like that is in the wings, and 48 million iPods are ready to take advantage of it.

Did I hit a nerve about typography? I was responding to a comment about the use of fonts in Web pages — not referring to ClearType. TrueType was indeed an Apple-Microsoft joint project.

I have to admit, I’m nervous about Vista’s audio path and its relationship to digital rights management (DRM) — such as the ability to obtain information about the songs you rip from CDs and the DVDs you play, and possibly extend copy protection to the digital versions of songs you rip from your own CDs. Does it work the same as Secure Audio Path in Windows XP? Does it require video and audio cards to authenticate themselves to Windows before playing digital content? When the operating system accesses media files, is noise added so that if the audio is intercepted by a pirate, the audio won’t be listenable? Is the content encrypted throughout the process until the security system verifies that path? That would mean that no other application or plug-in can intercept the encrypted content. What about using another program to apply equalization (such as boosting the treble or bass) or to produce visual effects synchronized with the music? Etc.

Maybe I do need an upfront learning experience with Microsoft’s teams. The problem is, most customers don’t get that kind of treatment.

So perhaps you could invite both Dvorak and myself, kill two birds with one all-day demo? And oh yes, Robert Fripp…

I’d love to give you a tour of Microsoft so you can meet the teams working on security. After that I’d take you to the teams who are working on the Tablet PC (does your Mac do that?) Then I’d take you to the teams who are working on the Media Center so you can do a variety of stuff when you hook your Windows Vista computer up to an HDTV. I didn’t notice Steve Jobs showing that off yesterday.

Then I’d take you to the typography team, where you’d learn all about the font work we’ve done (that Apple hasn’t, by the way — Apple even licenses ClearType’s technology from us).

Then I’d take you over and show you how we’re making developers lives a lot easier with Visual Studio .NET 2.0.

Then I’d take you over and introduce you to the networking team (the networking stack in Windows Vista is completely new and a LOT higher performance. Also is IPv6 native). Then I’d take you over and introduce you to the audio team. The audio stack in Windows Vista is completely new. Lets you do things like per-app audio and other things that haven’t been thought out yet.

Then I’d take you over to the sidebar team and show you some of the new stuff they are doing (we haven’t shown that off yet cause we’re scared that Steve Jobs would copy it, after all he copied Konfabulator).

Oh, wait, I’ve already done most of that on http://channel9.msdn.com