For many readers of the Financial Times, this is the happy day when they can switch off one expensive piece of electronic equipment and switch on another. As the Christmas holidays arrive, it is time to stop monitoring financial markets on their Bloomberg terminals and start listening to music on their Apple iPods.

On the face of it, the two devices could hardly be more different. But Apple and Bloomberg are oddly alike in their approach to technology and marketing. Each was founded by an autocratic leader with a distinctive vision of what consumers wanted, and each flourishes despite arrogantly confining its customers within a "walled garden" - a closed world of proprietary technology.