That would make Microsoft pretty disdainful of OS X/Linux/BSD/yada yada.. users as well, Visual Studio is not on anything but Microsoft platforms.

Both of their priorities are themselves, their customers and their developers.

If your software supports HTTP Live streaming, you can watch it. What Apple is saying is that will be using this to play and they know that the necessary support is in these devices/client software. If you can find the supporting software on your client ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_Live_Streaming#Clients ) there's nothing stopping you from viewing it. And, the spec is published ools.ietf.org/html/draft-pantos-http-live-streaming (It may not be in widespread use but it is available ).