In defense of Sony's software/firmware team I'd argue that we've also been repeatedly burned by Sony's flawed hardware full of their endless NIH proprietary BS (e.g. Memory Stick, UMD, Minidisc, ATRAC, Betamax, to name just a few).
But Sony is a champion of undermining industry standards. S/PDIF is a bastardization of AES/EBU. They created a bullshit version of Firewire with a rinky-dink non-standard connector that lacked power. They continued to cripple their products with Memory Stick for years after the rest of the planet settled on SD.
Their first Thunderbolt support came crammed into a hacked USB port on one of their laptops.
