I disagree with your comment. Microsoft wasn't bad for being closed, it was bad for attempting to use its monopoly to force its competitors out of business. Apple's closed, but they have plenty of competition, so it's all right. As for the Internet being open, I'd like to see you download the source code for a 37signals application. You can't, because it's closed. But you can use APIs to export data? Well, good news! You can export your iPhone's data also, and they give you APIs to do so!
But it doesn't matter that I disagree with your comment, because my actual point is that Ballmer doesn't have a point, is a terrible executive, and should have been fired two years ago for his riotous incompetence as a businessman and a marketer.
Or maybe I interpreted Ballmer's comments differently than you did. I might be wrong in my interpretation, but it sounds to me like Ballmer is complaining that the iPhone interacts with the internet via proprietary applications on the device rather than web applications.
> Microsoft ... was bad for attempting to use its monopoly to force its competitors out of business.
That's certainly a valid point. It's unfortunate, because what made Microsoft successful in the first place was its relative openness (particularly its cheap OS licencing terms) compared to its competitors. They seem to have forgotten this after becoming the de facto standard for desktop PCs.
However, Microsoft was also bad for being closed and proprietary. Ask people who developed software in VB6, only to have Microsoft abandon them and break backwards compatibility in the .Net framework.
> As for the Internet being open, I'd like to see you download the source code for a 37signals application.
That's true, but it's not what I was claiming. What I meant by "open" was that anyone with any kind of computer that has a reasonably modern browser can access and use a 37signals application. You don't need a special proprietary application or framework running on your own device to do this.
And I need Windows to run Steam, and I need a Mac to run iPhoto. You're suggesting an absurd fantasy wherein everything runs on everything. If I want "open" by your definition of "it's on the Internet" on the iPhone, I go to the Internet.
Ballmer has a point. The internet is an open platform with a relatively simple set of open protocols and formats for transferring data, providing services, and so on. Applications built on top of the internet stack are accessible to any device that can read HTML, XML, JSON, YAML, and so on. Even the browser makers are doing a good job of coalescing around the standards.
The iPhone, by contrast, is a narrow, closed, proprietary system built on top of the open internet. If you don't have an iPhone, you can't use any of the applications built for it. Similarly, if you want to develop an iPhone app, you have no choice but to go out and buy a Mac to get the development framework. Heck, you can't even distribute an iPhone app without going through Apple's App Store and conforming with its fuzzy terms of service.
That's the very opposite of the open internet. It's easy to hate on Microsoft for being closed and proprietary, but Apple is at least as bad.