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Microsoft Wins Windows XP Downgrade Lawsuit
CWmike writes "A federal judge has dismissed a year-old lawsuit against Microsoft over alleged antitrust violations for the 'downgrade' rules it set for Windows Vista and XP. The order put an end to the lawsuit filed by Emma Alvarado in February 2009. In her original complaint, she accused Microsoft of coercing computer makers into forcing consumers who wanted to run Windows XP to first buy Windows Vista, or later, Windows 7, before they were allowed to downgrade to XP. The judge rejected Alvarado's accusations, saying that the plaintiff had not proved Microsoft benefited from the downgrade practices that it created and that OEMs implemented."
I'm not a lawyer but how do you not prove that they benefited by having OEMs sell the newer version of their software before allowing a downgrade path?
As a user of Linux, OS X and Windows, Windows is still the worst. Unfortunately a lot of Linux flavours take their queue from Windows where they should be taking them from OS X.
Microsoft is under no obligation to give you a license for Windows XP if it doesn't want to. They've removed it from the general marketplace, but have left even Windows 3.1 in the MSDN subscription packages, even if those are a high price to pay for an old operating system, it's still the going rate.
What a waste of resources. This lawsuit had no hope, and the money spent would have been better off asking Congress to lower the copyright expiration standard for software.
So this lady was suing because of what? Being slightly inconvenienced? And Vista wasn't bad at all. Especially with a new machine that had the proper drivers. All you had to do was turn off UAC and set it to classic theme and you couldn't tell the difference between it and XP. Windows 7 rocks. This lady was just trying to make a quick buck off a frivolous lawsuit.
Besides, this was already covered under anti-trust legislation as illegal tying as Vista was the unwanted product tethered to the purchase of most OEM computers. Unfortunately, the chances of this ever being enforced are slim in the United States.
Sigs are too short to say anything truly profound so read the above post instead.
Another stupid judge ruling our lives. Don't you think a judge ought to know something about the field he is ruling in before he is allowed to make judgments there? Would be nice, wouldn't it?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Why can't the system have a panel of retired judges look at civil cases before a full trial to ensure it is warranted? If the plaintiff wants to move anyway when told there is not case, so be it. But the loser and the loser's lawyer should have to pay something to the winner. There has to be some meaningful consequence for the losers.
It is always refreshing to watch a master criminal at work. Microsoft, the company that has made billions by locking users with false promises on knowingly sold defective malware, stolen technology, selling crap EULAs to sell 2, 3, even 4 licenses just get a machine running and compatible, trampling implied warranty into the ground, evading antitrust prosecutions with perjured testimonies and harried, baited judges, and multiples more on jobbed stock.
Bribery and graft are simply how business is done, and Microsoft has a lot of moolah to grease palms with.
How ya like dat?
> There has to be some meaningful consequence for the losers.
Almost nobody wants to go to court. (Attorneys sometimes do because it's fun to do advocacy before the court, but most of them are smart enough to put client interests first. Debt Collection agencies also want to because they're almost never opposed, because people don't have money to fight them, but they don't even really think of it as going to court.) Courts also have pre-trial systems in place to try to get the parties to agree to a settlement before trial is necessary--pretrial conferences serve that function in most courts. A judge can look at the record and say "Are you sure you don't want to just settle this?"
Losing a lawsuit that you've spent years on (and likely paid for someone else to spend years on) is a pretty meaningful consequence for the losers.
You've also got the problem that the bigger the consequence to the loser, the less likely they are to bring legitimate claims to court.
-- IANAL, this isn't legal advice, and definitely isn't legal advice for you. Also, Squee!
No, you're good if the plaintiff doesn't prove you did it.
If you disagree with me on social issues, then it's pretty clear that you are a narrow-minded bigot.
oh please use your brain. how were they forcing them to not sell XP? by not selling it to them in the first place!!!!
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
This is from the article:
Computer makers, not Microsoft, charged users the additional fees for downgrading a new PC from Vista to XP at the factory. However, Alvarado did not name Lenovo Group Ltd. in her lawsuit.
She sued MS for a practice of the OEM. Wrong defendant.
It's possible that she could have shown vertical market manipulation, but that might not have been relevant. Such practices might give rise to a federal antitrust suit, but she brought a state unfair practices action.
I'm no expert in the laws of Washington state, but from the article it appears that among other things she had to show that she did not receive value for her money and she failed to do so.
Hmm. Your answer is too well thought out, logical, and evidence-based. Next time, please post a variation on this post.
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Now if you want to downgrade to IE6, should microsoft give you a prize in addition to allowing you to do that stupid thing? They don't want to support Windows-XP and they do everything to discourage usage of that OS. What is wrong with this?
Every OS has its zealots who thing it is the One True Way(tm). Well, if your OS is the only way to go, that must mean other OSes suck. In particular, Linux and Mac zealots tend to hate on Windows so hard because it is so dominant. They convince themselves that their OS is amazing and superior, the masses are just too stupid to realize it.
There's no reasoning with the zealots.
Your lawyer would probably get you off on an insanity plea since there's no motive.
So yea.
72.54% of Windows users continue to use XP, so it is abundantly clear that the the market prefers XP to 7/Vista. If Microsoft had any competitors they would be forced to continue selling XP in order to avoid losing market share, however their monopoly means they do not have to worry about this since there literally aren't any competitors*. They are therefore abusing their monopoly by forcing 7/Vista onto a market that does not want it. What the judge says is true and Microsoft really aren't benefiting from this since they get a sale whether it's XP or 7, but that doesn't change the fact that this is a clear case of severe monopoly abuse. I certainly feel abused because I want to buy a laptop with Windows XP but all the options in my price range come with Windows 7 Home Premium. How can the judge conclude this isn't monopoly abuse? Somebody get the EU!
*Mac OS is not a direct competitor to Windows since I can't legitimately install Mac OS on my PC. Alternatives like Linux aren't quite ready for the mainstream desktop user yet.
Most of the world's non-embedded computers run Windows. When a company reaches that level of influence, it ceases to be just another firm and instead becomes a part of our societal infrastructure. It's certainly reasonable to hold such organizations to a higher standard than we hold smaller organizations. The power company can't "do as they want" either.
As long as Microsoft wants to enjoy the lucrative benefits of being a singular part of society's information infrastructure, society ought to have a say in how Microsoft is run.
You might argue that imposing such restrictions is "punishing success". That's hardly true. The people responsible for Microsoft's growth have been rewarded many times over. If Microsoft finds regulations unbearable, it can split itself in two smaller companies, or shrink some other way. Then, it would no longer be subject to the same scrutiny.
But as long as Microsoft
A computer should be separate from the software; as such a customer should never be compelled to buy a computer conditional on also buying the software on the device. Of course this is already covered under US antitrust law as illegal tying even if it is rarely if ever enforced.
In other news, Apple Computer has hit an all time high in the stock market...
The power of your argument is overwhelming. I am compelled to concede.
I agree with your comment, all the rights are with Microsoft and so no one can do anything for that. Even if you sue it then also you wont be about to get any better results.
vegetarian army rations
So if I murder that judge’s children, I’m good, as long as I don’t benefit from it? ;)
What an idiot.
No, if you want to buy murder of the judge from a hitman, then the hitman can insist that you first buy murder of judge's children, and then downgrade to the murder of their parent, as long as the hitman doesn't benefit from the murder of the children.
Of course selling or buying murder is still a crime in itself, while selling or buying Windows isn't so much... But that doesn't mean you're "good" in either case ;-)
Productivity = yes that thing that you gain from good design, unlike vis7a which has retarded design is so many areas and crap changes, so much so that settings and changes I could get to and make in a few clicks, suddenly becomes an effort of extra clicks all because of the crap UI layout/position/ location of settings options etc once again in the Explorer shell! how many times do I need to bring up that heap of shit.
Vista has one saving grace that works out of the box: easily starting programs with keyboard. Just hit "Windows"-key and start typing away, and it'll give you smaller and smaller list of possible programs and documents, and most of the time the program you're after will be at the top of the list after a few keystrokes, so you can just press enter to launch it.
As an example, I'm sure you know how to get to modifying environment variables in XP?. Well, in Win7, just hit "Win-key", type "environ" and select it from menu (ie. just press enter, IIRC). No more navigating stupid control panel.
The rest of changes are pretty good too after getting used to them, I especially like being able to easily set up two half-screen windows side-by-side and being able to maximize window vertically. But that "command line like" launching of programs, that's enough reason for any Linux-user to start hating XP (when compared to Win7, I mean).
He made reference to bodily wastes 23 times, if anybody was counting. "Fuck" occurred 11 times as well.
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
Instead of counting as an XP sale. It is instead counted as a Vista sale, and the marketing clowns at Microsoft get to beat their chests about how well the uptake of Vista was going (in stark contrast to the bad trade press no less). Nothing builds momentum like manufactured momentum...
You do realize that copyright is what makes the GPL work?
Even if you buy your rather strange argument, the proper forum to regulate the behavior of large corporations is the government not individual random lawsuits.
My Windows 7 (beta) system hardly ever gets rebooted. I only ever put it in sleep mode these days and it just keeps chugging along for a few months at a stretch. Eventually some update or power failure forces me to reboot or switch it off.
I did have one time where my memory usage got too high and I had to reboot, but I blame the stupid developer who wrote the buggy program that I was using at the time. Unfortunately, the developer was me.
Perhaps your problem is that you have some buggy code by a studid developer on your system. Oh look, you mentioned EA!
As long as Microsoft wants to enjoy the lucrative benefits of being a singular part of society's information infrastructure, society ought to have a say in how Microsoft is run.
You might argue that imposing such restrictions is "punishing success"
You could also argue that society's choices - it's collective decisions - made Microsoft and Windows what they are today.
IE6 was awful compared to IE8.WinXP costs money, IE6 is free. WinXP is arguably better than Vista so, imo, it's a different situation.
Can you think of any GPL software from, say, 10 or 15 years ago that would be much use as the basis for a closed-source app today? Probably the most popular software of that age is WinXP, and re-selling that without SP1-3 would be nigh impossible.
Personally, I'd like it if, to receive copyright protection, software had to be either published with all sources, makefiles, etc., or have those placed in escrow until the copyright expired, and likewise the high-res masters of a/v works. This way, the version in the public domain contains all the information needed to make derivative works from it. As it is, books, for example, contain the copyright material in losslessly, for the most part, even if duplicating it would be non-trivial,
You're kidding, right? The classic theme looks monumentally different in just the colors alone. The feel and the navigation are the same, but color scheme is way off. There is a noticeable difference.
LOL. Looks like I got moderated by a judge...or somebody who bought one and doesn't like to see the merchandise devalued.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Well, the Linux kernel comes to mind. The core is from the early '90s. Different parts would go into the public domain at different dates, since a lot was added to it later.
Whether this would be a good thing or a bad thing, I don't know. I'm more sympathetic to new-BSD styled licences, but I can see cases where the GPL would be preferrable.
I just wanted to remark that reducing copyright terms for commercial software is a knife that cuts both ways.
Who modded you insightful?
The US legal system is a method through which the US government finds issues to jump upon and regulate. Furthermore, the legal system exists solely because it is a function of government (hence why we call it a court of law).
Parent is also wrong; all organizations, regardless of size, should be held to the same level of regulation.Society does have a say in how every organization is run, its called a combination of laws, public ownership (stock), and political harm (environmentalists). Society should not, however, control how an organization is run. Recently, banks were told exactly how to be run by society, at great cost to society. We should have allowed banks to fail, so that new banks could take over and succeed. Instead, every US citizen is now paying for banks not failing by having their credit card interest rates hiked (mine went from 4% to 12%, but people with bad credit are seeing upwards of 30%) due to regulation telling banks how to run their organization. This is just a contemporary example of why government intervention = everyone loses.
Larger organizations may be subject to more scrutiny, but the laws should not differ simply because your company makes more money.
I can think of such opensource tools, though not necessarily GPL. SSH, which forked from open source to closed source and still has an open source fork available, is available in a more featureful closed source version, especially including Kerberos support ofr Windows clients.
Sorry, I call bullshit. Let me tell you about my own experience pal.
Oh Vista how I hated thee, let me count the ways-1.-Network slows to a fucking crawl when I listen to music or watch videos. Yeah I really missed having to not touch my PC when I download, like good old Windows 95! -2.-Networks shares that would "disappear" even though everyone else on the network could see them fine, and only a hard reboot would fix. Yes, I really missed the days of Win9x and daily reboots, thanks Vista! -3.-The thrashing. Oh Jebus tap dancing Christ on a stick did that thing love to thrash! On a 3.6GHz, with 2Gb of RAM and a 7600GS to offload the desktop, and after applying every tweak and fix I could find, the bastard still thrashed so hard that it killed a brand new 200Gb HDD. You know, I had actually forgotten what a thrashing hard drive was like. Thanks Vista!
Working in a repair shop, my one, and in fact my only Vista request, is from people wanting it gone. In fact I have three scheduled for next week that are using part of their income tax return to buy nice new Windows 7 HP upgrades so I can kill Vista dead. If you sir had a great Vista experience you are in the minority. I have been building PCs since the days of Win3.x and I never could get that bitch to behave. Windows 7 on the other hand runs like a dream, with low memory usage, no thrashing, network is fast and solid, everything "just works". Vista was a pig, a bloated evil hateful nasty mess. And since it came out I have yet to have a "happy Vista user" walk into my shop, and that is saying something.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Uhhh...the same way they got busted for being a monopoly in the first place? The OEMs had plenty of XP licenses and discs. Just go to Newegg and see how many OEM XP licenses they have for sale, where do you think those come from? The OEMs. MSFT then tells the OEMs "You want that license discount you have been enjoying? You better do what we say, or Dell gets the sweet deal and you pay full retail." And voila! The OEMs do what MSFT says and you have Vista only.
Look, I'm a Windows guy, been building Windows boxes since Win3.x, but the whole Vista thing just stank. You know when Tigerdirect was bragging "We got XP machines!" that something was up. Less than 3 months after Vista came out folks were bringing Vista machines to me to "fix" and when I told them I couldn't they promptly returned them. You know the OEMs didn't want to see all that hardware returning, so they pressured MSFT to give them the rights to sell XP. But MSFT figured out a way to double dip, by making sure that Home licenses had NO downgrade rights so the ONLY way for a Home user to get XP was to pay a higher price for Business and downgrade to XP Pro, which most didn't need.
So to me it looks pretty cut and dried. Home users wanted XP, so MSFT forced them to buy business licenses at a higher cost to get the XP they wanted in the first place. In fact the only way to get an XP Home license using downgrade rights is to buy Ultimate, the most expensive SKU! So yeah, somebody needs to refile, as the home users got screwed.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Why? Because it's conceptually elegant?
These laws already discriminate based on size: small businesses are exempted from many labor and regulatory requirements. Why can't we add a class for very large corporations?
Why not? Also, you just contradicted yourself.
Why not?
Speaking directly to your response by paragraph,
I don't understand what you mean by 'conceptually elegant'. 'Because it looks good' is not a reason to regulate. I assure you that you agree with me on this point. For example, I am against legislation allowing gay marriage because I am against the concept of any marriage. Its just a tax liability loophole, whereas people can create individual contracts to live together and combine assets in the formation of a family unit (whether or not they have children or even the ability to have children) regardless of sexual orientation so long as you don't call it a marriage contract (instead, call it an llc), therefore the concept is ridiculous (granted, there are a few tax credit/deductions that can only be earned through a marriage contract, but whoever heard of getting married so that you have a different standard deduction?). See how regulation regarding gay marriage is explicitly unecessary, as all people should be held to the same standard of regulation, just as businesses should?
Small businesses are exempt from labor and regulatory requirements because it would be both impossible to enforce and impossible to implement (both from a prohibitively expensive standpoint and from a reasonableness standpoint) in the majority of small businesses. This does not mean that our current laws are accurate or reasonable.
You seem to not understand the difference between what does exist vs what should be. I did not contradict myself. You can start a philosophical discussion about whether businesses care about customers beyond doing the bare minimum to keep people buying stuff, but in reality, without government interference, the purpose of a business is not to make money (see publicly traded company, government regulation of for detailed explanation).
Give me an explanation of why so, and I will tell you why you are wrong.
Alternatives like Linux aren't quite ready for the mainstream desktop user yet.
Yes, but 2010 will be the year of the Linux desktop; just you wait and see...
I ask whether conceptual elegance motivates your thoughts because I can't conceive of any other reason for asserting that the law must apply in a uniform manner to large and small companies alike.
Look, I'm with you on getting the government out of marriage. The rights currently conferred by marriage should be split up into individual agreements that any two people can agree to.
That said, you must be aware of how difficult it would be to remove the concept of marriage from the law. The political cost would be astronomical, and the gain would be quite minimal. So in a practical sense, the government will always officiate marriages. Because marriage is not going away, and because it does confer definite benefits, your opposition to gay marriage is an endorsement of continued inequality for one class of people. In fact, your confusion between "is" and "ought" in this instance is so plain that one must wonder whether you have other reasons for your opposition to gender-blind marriage.
You did not address my question.
You made a categorical assertion that we have no basis for applying different laws to large and small businesses. I asked you for the supporting foundational arguments behind that assertion, and you did not provide any. Again: why are we, in your view, specifically prohibited from applying different laws to businesses that dominate their markets?
I don't expect you to believe me. I expect you to agree with me. The difference is important.
What does that have to do with my argument? I'm not arguing that Microsoft should be charged double electricity rates, or that we should collect double bridge tolls from its employees.
Yes, but we do not individually exert a huge influence of the security of society. Microsoft does.
Like I said: regulating companies is not punishing success. Microsoft has two options:
One would presume that Microsoft is better off under option B that under option A --- that's not a punishment for success. It's a reward with strings. There's nothing wrong with that.
As long as Microsoft wants to enjoy the lucrative benefits of being a singular part of society's information infrastructure, society ought to have a say in how Microsoft is run.
Society already has a say. They can stop buying Windows.
Comment of the year
Not quite.
I didn't say that the law must apply in a uniform manner to large and small companies alike, I said that it should. As for why, the very concept of a free market (which we currently only have in a limited state but generally agree would be a preferred business strategy here in the US, land of the anyone can do anything) requires that environmental factors regarding business are not modified by outside influences. For example, barriers to entry should only include economic (is there a market for product/service) and financial (for-profits should make a profit, non-governmental non-profits must have (private) funding, governmental for and not for profits should not compete with established organizations unless they can do so to the benefit of society; ie cheaper and better, lending institutions should not be governmentally based [so as to avoid political motivations, see no child left behind and abstinence only education]), and should not include political influences (environmentalists, religious organizations that proselytize, etc; that influence regulation. In other words, its ok that PETA exists, but PETA should not be telling BSA to get rid of fishing merit badge by funding political campaigns that promise to declare it an outrage).
We are not prohibited from applying different laws to different businesses (in fact this occurs regularly, based not on size of the business but rather the content of the business itself; for example, a shoe making factory is not held to beef inspections for mad cow). In clarification, the laws that we apply to all businesses should apply to all businesses in the same manner regardless of [business success]. As for why, there is no reasonable basis for punishing success, especially success that comes only because of a broken system (fix the system, and you don't have to fix specific situational items with controversial law after controversial law).
For example, large businesses should not receive specific tax credits that smaller businesses do not based on volume, as the incentive to produce larger volumes already exists (economies of scale/quantity discount pricing, expansion/growth/ROI for shareholders, etc). Small businesses, however, should not receive government loans at lower rates than large businesses, as small businesses have a larger risk of default, and the American taxpayer should not be one to shoulder such differential risk.
To address your last question, there are many, many reasons to provide different laws for different businesses, but being particularly good at what you do is not in and of itself one of them.
As an example, look at sarbanes oxley, an SEC regulation that has strict requirements for disclosure among all businesses, and higher penalties for fraud than previously existed. While some of the disclosure requirements are optional for smaller businesses (specifically when adherence would make it prohibitively expensive), this does not mean that small businesses can commit fraud without the new penalties for getting caught. While SOX is good for businesses because it gives (stupid) shareholders more faith in the honesty of business filings, it is actually bad for businesses because it doesn't actually make businesses any more honest. Furthermore, it makes 10k/10q filings less understandable. Meanwhile, larger businesses should have to hire more people for all of the new disclosure requirements, but in practice, they just increase the workload of their present employees. This leads to more burnout turnover, which is bad for both employers and employees, simply because a company, as you put it, dominates the market.
72.54% of Windows users continue to use XP, so it is abundantly clear that the the market prefers XP to 7/Vista.
Wow, giant fallacy in your first sentence.
If you said, 72.54% of *new computer purchases in 2010* have XP installed, then you'd have a point. You'd also have a point if the upgrade to Windows 7 was free and trivially-easy.
As-is, though, you're just spouting nonsense. Do you think this site is full of jellybrains? Did you think we'd fall for that trick?
Comment of the year
Yes, I am a troll because I like Vista more than XP
This had nothing to do with your personal opinion- which you're quite entitled to- and everything to do with the section I was replying to and quite clearly quoted alone:-
The only people who say that XP is better than Vista are people who haven't actually used Vista.
That's a blatantly sweeping, across-the-board generalisation. If you expect people to take something that all-encompassing and unqualified seriously, you're going to have to back it up.
You didn't, and it came across as a borderline-troll, or- at best- unsubstantiated and worthless.
my actual perception is that Vista naysayers simply recite the tired old flaws in Vista that have been fixed for years now.
Your actual perception is just that- perception. It might be right or wrong. It's probably coloured by your personal opinion, and time spent reading Slashdot- whose audience is a tiny and unrepresentative section of the mass home and business IT market as a whole.
Vista was rejected by the mass market, not by the niche of Slashdotters alone.
Oh and your post is proof enough.
My post proves nothing except that anyone making major assertions with nothing to back them up doesn't deserve to be taken seriously.
If you had used Vista SP1 or later with non-ancient drivers, then you would know that Vista is simply a better OS than XP.
Matter of opinion, and an attempt to shift the ground. What you originally said above didn't mention SP1 at all, merely that:-
The only people who say that XP is better than Vista are people who haven't actually used Vista.
It's quite probable that people tried the original release of Vista, disliked it and that's what caused the negativity towards Vista. Whether it improved later doesn't change that- they tried it, the negativity stuck and your stupid generalisation is shown to be bunk.
You just owned yourself there, buddy.
Quite the opposite; your later mention of SP1- which massively alters the nature of your original assertion by excluding *everyone* who used the original release- proves that it was drivel in the first place.
And that's what happens when you pull unsubstantiated generalisations out of your ass, "buddy".
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Sorry to burst your RDF sparky, but that WAS SP1. After it still ran like ass even after SP1 I tossed that giant turd, and last I heard my Vista Business disc is still getting passed around like a bad fruitcake. But hey, maybe you got the "magic combo" just as one of my customers has probably the only computer in history that actually runs WinME stable! From what I understand if you run an Intel only board, with no hardware acceleration, hey all is golden. Me personally I actually like having some graphics and sound with my PC, but that's just me.
And since I started building with Win 3.0 in 90, what exactly were you fucking building a decade before? Altairs? Hell unless you lived in Silicon valley they didn't even sell wholesale parts to civilians before 86, so I call bullshit. Nice try though.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I have indeed used Vista for a brief period (having to support it at my previous job) and I'm it got better over time (or I would hope) but I don't have time any more to wait for something to get better and with Win 7 coming out so soon afterwards there was no reason to go with Vista.
It is arguable and people will be insistent their opinion is the right one. It is all subjective but I do believe it says something that Vista had a shorter life. In fact it had half the life XP had before it's replacement came out.
I've been building systems since DOS 1.0. Everything was stored in the root directory and we liked it that way! Now get off my lawn!!
"If your parents never had children, chances are you wonât either." -Dick Cavett
As long as Microsoft wants to enjoy the lucrative benefits of being a singular part of society's information infrastructure, society ought to have a say in how Microsoft is run.
Society does! And they vote with their wallets. You don't have to buy microsoft, there are plenty of other options but the reality is most people don't care! Just like with the browser issue, MS wasn't stopping anyone from running a different browser, other options either didn't offer compelling reasons to change or weren't marketed well enough so since there was no problem with the microsoft offering they just used it. I prefer Chrome to IE so i go and download that, i prefer Linux to Windows so - wherever possible - i use it instead, no one at MS is stopping me.
if they were actually preventing the use of an alternative then that would be a different story, but only because they are a monopoly, of course companies like Apple can do this without a problem.
Perhaps the reason for MS' occasional product downfalls is this consistent bullshit they are constantly having to deal with.
What the...? Troll? Did someone miss the sarcasm?
What an idiot. :P
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.