3) Consumer before Business
Another area where Apple excels is in making customers feel that they are more important than the company's business partners. iTunes continues to hold the line for 99-cent songs and $1.99 TV episodes, despite pressure from music, movie and TV studios who want variable (read: more expensive) pricing. Last year, NBC tried to strong-arm Apple into making certain TV shows more expensive than others. Apple told them to take a hike, turning away a big partner in favor of consumer interest.

In the meantime, Xbox Live still carries a super-confusing set of prices and rules for downloading TV shows and movies, to say nothing of the points-to-dollars conversion system. Downloaded Movies can be watched repeatedly for 24 hours, after which you'll have to pay to watch them again, while the files are still eating up space on your hard drive. To be fair, Apple's new iTunes rental service operates in much the same way -- but at least there you can watch the movie on your desktop, laptop, iPhone, iPod or TV (via Apple TV).

Then there are other format restrictions console-makers employ to that make it obvious that the consumer isn't top of mind. Sony uses Bluetooth exclusively, which means that any universal remote sans Bluetooth won't work with the system, forcing you have to buy a Sony remote to get the full Blu-ray experience. The company also removed the ability to play older PlayStation 2 games from the newest PS3 model, which is kind of like saying your iPod won't play songs from before 1980.

4) Square Experience, Circle Lifestyle
The Xbox 360 doesn't include Wi-Fi, even in the most expensive configuration, so you have to spend another $100 for a wireless adaptor. Nintendo restricts the Mii characters to first-party games only (with very few exceptions) and until very recently, third-party games couldn't be played online on the Wii.

Sure, we can knock Apple for building a closed-loop system -- the iTunes protected AAC format is not open to other audio players, the Mac OS and hardware are tied in together, etc. But unlike Sony, at least Apple never tried to freeze out the MP3 format.

Apple isn't perfect, but at least it tries to keep it simple. We'd like to see game companies work a little harder at creating software and hardware that keeps the consumer in mind. After all, you're certainly spending enough on their products already.