Microsoft Windows XP N Flops
ChocLinux writes "Dell, Lenovo and Fujitsu Siemens have announced they have no plans to pre-install Windows XP N, the version of Windows without a bundled media player that Microsoft released to comply with the European Commission antitrust ruling. It is now almost six months since Microsoft released Windows XP N, and the fact that no-one wants to sell it suggests that this antitrust case may be going the way of the US one. Also, the article raises the question - now that RealNetworks has settled with Microsoft, will anyone bother to complain about this? Of course there's a chance that the EC might bring a new antitrust case against Microsoft, but how much more effective is that likely to be?"
Incorrect.
The situations is exactly identical on Mac and on Windows. On Mac OS X, the web browser (HTML redering) functionality is WebKit and Safari is just a thin GUI shell around it. In the same way, IE is just a thin GUI shell around the web browser (HTML rendering) functionality embedded into the OS.
If you remove the IE shell, nothing will break in Windows. However, if you remove the HTML rendering capability lots of things will break. In the same way, if you remove Safari nothing will break in OS X but if you remove WebKit, tons of things will break. There's a HUGE amount of applications that rely on WebKit!!
Of course Slashdot readers often overlook this fact because they think it's cool to bitch about Microsoft.