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Their Outlook Web Access application is decidedly more feature-filled for IE than it is for Firefox, for example.

That's because they added features to IE to speed up OWA. Including, interstingly enough XMLHttpRequest, the basis of Ajax. What's interesting is that Microsoft supported this in IE 5 in 1999 via an ActiveX control. Mozilla implemented it as a native object in 2002. Opera copied Mozilla's implementation in Opera 8 in 2005. Finally Microsoft added support for the Mozilla/Opera native object implementation in IE 7 in 2006.

The WWWC published a spec for XMLHTTPRequest in 2008.

So it's not true that Microsoft "don't follow standards". They actually support functionality before the painfully sluggish WWWC standardise it. So in fact do Mozilla, it's just that the WWWC end up making the Mozilla implementation the standard.

And they support OWA on Firefox, they just don't make as feature filled. That seems ok to me. It's not like they tie OWA to IE. I.e. you have an advantage of using IE with OWA, but they don't force you to.

Apple is going to lose this one. It's a illegal tying arrangement under the Clayton Act:

The basic requirements that must be met for tying to be per se illegal are as follows:

1. There must be two separate products or services.
2. There must be a sale or an agreement to sell one product (or service) on the condition that the buyer purchase another product or service (or the buyer agrees not to purchase the product or service from another supplier).
3. The seller must have sufficient economic power with respect to the tying product to appreciably restrain free competition in the market for the tied product.
4. The tying arrangement must affect a "not insubstantial" amount of commerce.

Apple would have to try to enforce their EULA in court against an antitrust claim that their EULA is an illegal tying arrangement, which, on its face, it is.

Apple was able to put the previous generation of clone-makers out of business because some key portions of the original MacOS were in ROM, shipped with the machine. So they could make copyright arguments against cloning the Mac ROMs. But for today's machines, the OS isn't built onto the motherboard, so there's no copyright claim.

IBM lost this issue a long time ago, when Compaq made the first PC clone. That's why there's a PC industry.

Apple could put DRM hardware in future Macs and encrypt future OS releases, like a game console. Not having done that, they're stuck.

It amazes me that the laws of antitrust (negative) tying aren't used against these schemes. From

http://www.aurorawdc.com/arj_cics_tying_arrangemen ts.htm

"The basic requirements that must be met for tying to be per se illegal are as follows:
  1. There must be two separate products or services.
  2. There must be a sale or an agreement to sell one product (or service) on the condition that the buyer purchase another product or service (or the buyer agrees not to purchase the product or service from another supplier).
  3. The seller must have sufficient economic power with respect to the tying product to appreciably restrain free competition in the market for the tied product.
  4. The tying arrangement must affect a "not insubstantial" amount of commerce."

Let's do these one at a time shall we...

"1. There must be two separate products or services."

We meet this with there being printers and cartridges. Two separate products sold separately.

"2. There must be a sale or an agreement to sell one product (or service) on the condition that the buyer purchase another product or service (or the buyer agrees not to purchase the product or service from another supplier)."

We have the negative form of tying by forcing customers to not buy from other suppliers especially if your printer detects "foreign" cartridges and doesn't print with them.

"3. The seller must have sufficient economic power with respect to the tying product to appreciably restrain free competition in the market for the tied product."

With over 50% TFA claims HP has they meet this one.

"4. The tying arrangement must affect a "not insubstantial" amount of commerce."

Suing their competition I would consider "not insubstantial". In fact, it is stifling commerce when you sue or threaten to sue competition.

Seems to me the various State AGs should take HP up on this one.

B.

Yes, there is one way. I had the exact same thought as you did, right up until I realized something: Intel no longer has a monopoly in the processor market.

The conclusion that then follows is: There is no more anti-trust. Just competition.

Actually...this behavior is called tying...which is also illegal.

One: It's another proprietary crap-pile from Apple.

Two: You're forced to pay for MacOS X, when you'd rather just put your own Linux distro in for Free.

Three: It's $499. Considering items one and two, that's highway fucking robbery for vendor lock-in.

= 9J =

Tivo is defending its patents in this area.

If they win, they could really could become ubiquitous instead of disappearing because of the clone wars.