Must the worlds of personal computers and of "post-PC" products, such as music players and cellphones, remain as far apart as they now seem to be?

I don't think so, and in explaining why, I'd like to play peacemaker in a debate kicking around in these pages over the past few weeks.

My colleague Walt Mossberg kicked it off two weeks ago in a column suggesting that the "component approach" used to make Wintel PCs, with different companies responsible for different parts of the device, will never do for a new post-computer generation of music players or mobile phones. Users, he said, want an integrated, easy-to-use experience, like they get from Apple.

A few days later, Microsoft's Bill Gates and Intel's Paul Otellini responded with an op-ed piece saying their component model is alive and well, and will do just as well in the future as it has in the past.

While the Microsoft-Intel team probably hasn't risen to Apple's design challenge as much as the two CEOs would like us to believe, I don't think it's unattainable for them. The differences between the two approaches have more to do with aesthetics than manufacturing processes. What Apple has, and what Wintel badly needs, is a design tyrant like Steve Jobs.

One of the best articulations of why this is so can be seen in a satirical video floating around the Internet showing what the iPod box would look like if it were designed by Microsoft. You can see it yourself by searching for "Microsoft I-pod" on a site such as YouTube.

At the start, we see an actual iPod box, with lots of elegant white space and a few simple, high-impact pictures -- a typical Jobs job. Then the Microsoft marketers go at it and begin larding it up with descriptions of product features and sundry other marketing messages. It ends up looking like every other bit of mediocre-package software in a computer store.

The video exposes the entire Windows aesthetic with humor and striking realism. You'd expect it to have been made by pranksters at Apple or the company's fans. In fact, it was produced by designers at Microsoft, in a spirit of self-criticism. It's as if they know the sort of great design they ought to be doing, but are too smothered by a corporate culture to deliver it.

At least at Microsoft, some in the trenches understand the problem. Elsewhere at Wintel, the glow of self-awareness isn't always evident.

Just take a look at one of the central products of the emerging post-PC world -- a living-room "media center" that will function like your current set-top box, but will also let you TiVo your favorite shows and access videos on the Web, among other things. Intel is making a big push to get into this market, and has launched a huge campaign around the newly minted Viiv brand to show how its chips work in these devices. But one of the first Viiv-based machines, judging by a review forwarded by industry watcher Pip Coburn, isn't anything I'd want in my house. The unit is described as big, boxy and ugly, with a loud fan and a badly designed remote control that crashes easily and takes a long time to do things even when it does work.

Apple is rumored to be preparing its own living-room video product, and whatever its shortcomings, I have a hard time imagining it getting similarly excoriated. Apple has a built-in benefit, because many assume that whatever it does is cool, they way some pop stars can start fads just by changing clothes.

But mostly, Apple has Mr. Jobs, who functions, in the words of one vendor trying to sell to Apple, as a "one-man focus group," a person with a legendary design sense who insists on getting what he wants.

That is possible on the Wintel side, despite occasional claims to the contrary. Both Microsoft and Intel have long had programs in which they certify products as complying with the technical specs of their chips or operating systems. It would take only a bit of imagination to extend that idea to an entire product and the experience of using it.

A "Microsoft-approved music player" or "Intel OK'd media hub" would need a consistent look, fit, finish and user-experience that the iPod does. There are, no doubt, lots of smart, visionary individuals at both companies capable of designing delightful versions of both products. If either company could manage to allow those visions to reach the marketplace without being battered down by committee-think -- in other words, to give one person or one idea Jobs-like powers -- the sky would be the limit.

Apple has worked hard in recent years to adopt some of the business-process efficiencies that the Wintel companies have long taken for granted. Its rivals, then, ought to be able to make themselves a little more creative.