One of my favorite online streaming radio stations is KCRW (out of Santa Monica), and one show I like is Jason Bentley's Metropolis. Often, I hear a track on this show that I would like to find out what it is, and on many streaming radio stations it's possible to go to a "now playing" list and find this out with very little problem.
However, KCRW's website, along with some others, essentially chooses to tie in their "now playing" list with Applecorp's iTunes website. And here's the problem: because I'm running Linux, I couldn't run iTunes even if I wanted to (because they only offer Windows and Mac versions). But I don't, in fact, want to run iTunes, because in general I dislike Apple's operating philosophy, focused as it is on image over substance, on dumbing down technology to just the level that they can sell it to righteous hipsters, their emphasis on paranoically closed-source operating systems and code, etc. etc. And I manage to feel this way, despite the fact that my "first" computer, way back in the day, was an Apple ][, and that I have very fond memories and a weird loyalty to that experience.
Actually, this should be a rant against KCRW, rather than against Apple: to the extent that it's the radio station's choice to make the tie-in to iTunes – although I assume there's some kind of mutually beneficial financial relationship there. But if there's a technological antithesis to the spirit of public radio, it's gotta be Apple. Compared to Apple, Microsoft looks positively communitarian, in that the development philosophy and marketing strategy at Microsoft is at least trying to offer some kind of lip service to universality (as opposed to Apple's elitism) – if only because Microsoft is monopolistic and bent on world domination at any cost. [Update – this rant is formally retracted via my retract-o-rant dated Feb 15]
Wouldn't a public radio station be more in line with a "for the people" marketing stance if they could try to make their website more universally accessible? Just a thought. Can we feel the love? It is, after all, St. Valentine's Day.