Nobody screwed over Be, as it was never a real contender.
I have BeOS version 3 and 4 at home, and while they were pretty cool I never found anybody who was remotely interested in them except some really perverse geeks like myself. Even the anti-MS Linux zealots universally derided it every time it was mentioned on slashdot.
Now this Scot Hacker might blame Microsoft for preventing dual boot, but it would not have mattered. If OEMs had installed BeOS on their systems along with Windows, they would have simply received a few million phone calls asking how they could free up the used space.
There was even talk at one time of Apple adopting Be, but instead went with this OS-X. But even then I don't believe Apple screwed over Be, because BeOS wasn't ready to replace MacOS and it needed the Apple commitment.
Be lacked applications, hardware drivers and all sorts of things which were necessary for it to succeed. But what it lacked most of all was a problem that needed to be solved that only it could do.
Nobody screwed Be over. Be was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong solution.
"even transfers to/from other machines linked directly to the same 100mbit switch, are noticeably slower, using samba, ftp.exe and cuteftp.. "
Hmm, I can saturate my 100baseT connection doing an ftp between my WinXP box and a Win2k server. That is, I'm seeing nearly 10Meg/sec transfer rates. I don't know you can expect faster than that.
"Remote assistance, sure.. but you had terminal server in win2k anyway"
Terminal server is not available for Win2k Pro. Comparable functionality would come from PCAnywhere, or VNC. Although VNC is very slow even on a local LAN.
"i still have a lot of older windows and dos software which won`t run, mostly games."
No, direct hardware access is not going to be available under any modern OS because it causes instabilities. But WinXP has better support for older Win95 software that didn't exist in Win2k.
"The "improved" user interface you speak of, is actually slower than the previous one"
Actually no it's not. Not with a modern video card anyway, and from a user perspective it's more efficient.
"garbage which makes it look like it was designed for children"
No, that would be Gnome and KDE.
"There are certified win2k drivers for my ATI Mach64 card (with tv in/out), yet there are no XP drivers... "
Well using a Mach64 would explain why you think the UI is slower. The ATI Rage I had at work was a dog. I have a Radeon 7500 at home which works very nicely.
That's too bad about compatibility. Moving forward, however, since WinXP is now the standard platform for both home and business users you will not see this problem. Already I've encountered a number of things which have XP support, but no support for 2k.(such as the HP Scanjet 2100c, and some digital cameras)
"The fact that XP is advertised as not crashing just shows MS's previous incompetence. "
So the fact that Linux now has a journaled filesystem is not a selling point because of past incompetence? The fact that all the problems identified after the Mindcraft benchmark is not a selling point because of past incompetence?
While your theory that users don't need much functionality may work in theory... it doesn't hold in practice.
The instance Joe from accounting asks his buddy Bob who works at Company X how he does something, and Bob sends him a sample Excel spreadsheet that doesn't work on Joe's computer... someone is going to ask "Why aren't we using standard software?"
For a company I worked at back in 1996 that was standardized on OS/2 and Lotus Smartsuite, this is what pushed them into migration to NT4 with Office 97.
That and the HR people had a hard time finding people trained in AmiPro, but no problem finding people already trained in Word.
Good luck with your migration plan, but I hope you have a backout strategy already devised.
"What company has said "We won't release our API because Microsoft told us not to"?"
None. This is a standard tactic of the anti-MS contingent. They blame anything and everything wrong with the IT industry on Microsoft. Doesn't matter if it's true or not.
It's one of the reasons why this anti-trust lawsuit has become such a joke. The latest is that Palm and Nokia are whining about Microsoft because of their own companies inability to innovate or make smart decisions. (hint: Palm is losing more marketshare to Handspring than PocketPC, whose fault is that? Nokia clobbered Motorola who is now regaining marketshare with new products)
Faster, better support for hardware and software(especially games and older stuff with new compatibility options), improved user interface, improved manageability, remote assistance, and so on.
Despite rumors to the contrary, they aren't even close.
But then your analysis depends on what you mean by "Windows".
Are you talking about Windows 98, or Windows XP? The two are quite different. You appear to refer to Windows 98.
On the other hand Windows XP plays games, does not crash, will run all their favorite software, is useful to those who know what they are doing, considered faster and more reliable, generally more suited to business and (especially) software development.
So why do we compare them when we already have a solution that is great for all practical uses?:)
You obviously don't visit the right audiophile websites. Try $2400 for speaker cable.
Besides, no audiophile in their right mind would be caught dead buying crap from Monster Cable. Sheesh! Not when there is stuff even more expensive out there.:)
However, in all seriousness. A lot of these audiophile components do have some basis in fact. The problem is that they take the fact and extend it with a more is better philosophy. The more being price, rather than actual substance.
Quality cables do make a difference. We know this is the case with ethernet cables, although you don't need to spend what Monster asks for ethernet cables. Now I did replace the cables on my CD player from the ones that came in the box to Monster Cables I paid $20 for and it honestly did make a noticeable difference in sound. Now I might have seen the same benefit from a $10 pair of cables, who knows. But moving to $900 cables very likely has diminishing returns.
On the otherhand the more expensive cables do have the benefit that they look cool. Some people are willing to spend a lot of money for something that looks cool but adds no real substance.
It's also not surprising that a mechanical device such as a CD transport may be susceptible to vibration. But again, do you need to spend $1,000 to properly isolate it? Maybe not setting the CD player on top of the speakers is enough?
Really I'm surprised you didn't mention the myth of the Green Marker.
The GNU organization stands for coercion, which is a threat to liberty.
I quote: "Low-paying organizations do poorly in competition with high-paying ones, but they do not have to do badly if the high-paying ones are banned."
That is a quote from the GNU Manifesto, it goes on further to rail against people who ask money for their work and how these people shall be outlawed as well.
"If I collect a bunch of sticks and buy a bunch of yarn and busy myself making god's eyes twelve hourse a day, do I "deserve" to get paid for it?"
Well you've certainly confused the issue by taking a very anal approach to reading comprehension.
The point was obviously that you DON'T have the right to use the other guys work without asking permission. It is quite possible the granting of permission may be commiserate with a payment of sorts, in fact in a capitalist society it usually is.
Yes, let the market decide. But the market is not supposed to involve coercion.
"Actually, by charging $15 for their product, it ceases to be a free-time/hobby contribution and starts to be a product. "
Well this is certainly true.
I think from the perspective of the AbiWord developers they certainly may not wish to work on a project and are satisfied with working on this as a hobby. I know the few open source projects I have worked on, such is the case. It's a good learning experience, it kills some free time, etc.
Certainly charging brings forward a certain responsibility that one may not want.
But therein lies the paradox that is Open Source. If it is a hobby, you have unlimited freedom to do that wish you please. But this is not what consumers are going to accept or expect, they want support and continued improvements, bug fixes and such in a timely manner.
So it all goes back to the zealotry and overselling that the original poster commented on.
I simply offered the alternative reality of essentially shareware.
I think all these models can, and have been, successful and do not see why one model must dominate over others. You evaluate the needs and the risk and use what is acceptable to you.
Now wait a minute. Based off your User # you've obviously been reading slashdot for a while.
Don't you realize you are speaking heresy?
I think you've hit upon the fundamental problem with Open Source. It's not that Open Source is a bad thing, it can actually be quite good. But it's ridiculous to assume it will ever completely replace the commercial software market. Or even have a signifigant impact upon it because of consumer expectations.
I've never used AbiWord and don't know what it's like. But imagine what these guys could do if instead of giving it away for free, they sold it for $15 off their website.
It may not make them rich, but I'll bet that could provide a steady income for a handful of people who could work full time to continuously improve the product.
Furthermore, by charging $15 for a product, they limit their user base to only those people who feel the product is worth something. But they also will realize that it's substantially cheaper than Word and won't expect quite all the same features.
I think one of the problems with catering to just the whackos who think everything should be free, is that these people think stuff should be free because they identify no value with the product or really the developers time.
It's the old complaint about Welfare. When people receive $500/week from the government for not working, they don't see any value in actually working. Now not everybody thinks that way, but there is a substantial sub-culture of the world that does.
"it will be hard to argue that MS's monopolistic position in the OS business was not used to force a position in the console business."
But so what?
If the reason why the monopoly was extended is because the product is superior, how has this harmed consumers?
"However, once competition is eliminated the cost of games can (to a point) become arbitrarily high,"
I've often seen this claim made, but it's never played out in reality. It's not a truth so much as it is fear-mongering. The only time period I can even think of in which these practices occured in the micro computer world was the 1980's. At that time there was plenty of competition, but you were much more locked down into a single vendor. The costs were high, the innovations were slow in coming, you were locked into platforms, etc.
In around 1990 my friends and I lamented that the computer world had become boring. It's really only been in the past 5 years that this has drastically changed. In a large part due to the internet, but also because of the increased quality and lower pricing of hardware which has allowed much more to be done.
Yet this past 5 years has been the time when Microsoft's monopoly has been undeniably secure, even moreso in the past two years with the release of Win2k and XP as they eliminated the complaints of stability and reliability from their critics.
If anything, I guess I would probably have to say that corporations tend towards just the opposite. Compelling lock-in, increased costs(especially to switch platforms) and so on when they are young and growing and most fearful of their future success. This loosening up helps to maintain their consumer satisfaction, whereas a tightening up would tend more to push disatisfaction and get people to buy competitors products.
But as the company matures, realizes it's position in the world is not at risk, they become more innovative, loosening standards, propelling forth new R&D, new innovations, taking more risks with their products and so forth.
In addition to Microsoft the other example I would use of this corporate maturity in action is IBM who is still very large, but has become a very solid innovator in recent years and leveraging their economies of scale to consumer benefit.
Now in the automobile market, I would say you were correct. The Big three consolidated and tightened down the screws on consumers into the 1970's. Not much innvoation, higher costs boring products and so forth. But this also compelled consumers to buy Japanese cars and caused GM's 50% marketshare to drop to 25%.
The tech market is slightly different because there is a much lower barrier to entry into the market than with automobile sales. You don't need $10 billion in startup capital to build a factory and create a car design.
"Why is it that when one simply states the fact that M$ has the historically poorest security record for its products than any other company in the same field of endeavor"
It is untrue when you consider the fact that RedHat has released something like 72 security vulnerabilities for Linux in 2001 versus the 57 security bulletins that Microsoft has released for all of their products.
And actually the RedHat number would be quite a bit higher, but instead of modifying bulletins on their site to say they have been superceded, they instead delete them. Based on their numbering system, one could easily assume they have released 160 bulletins this year about their product.
So the simple fact is, RedHat has a much worse security record than Microsoft. By extenstion that implies Linux is far more insecure than Windows.
"They are also leveraging the fact that it is easier to port a Windows PC game to Xbox (and vica versa) because the Xbox is basically a specialized...Windows PC! "
I don't think you quite understand what leveraging means, and how it is bad.
Leveraging a companies ability to more efficiently create something, is not what the Sherman anti-trust law was about. Efficiency in production and lower expenses are pro-consumer.
When they speak of leveraging, it means things like forcing anybody who wants to buy Windows XP to also buy an X-Box, thereby more than doubling the cost of Windows XP. These types of activities are generally not condoned. It's sort of like if you take a loan out from a bank, the bank can't force you to also buy life insurance. Banks used to do that, but it's now explicitly illegal. Why? Because it's anti-consumer as it forces the consumer to buy something they don't want to get something they need.
Besides, claiming WMA is proprietary and MP3 is not is not at all accurate. They are both proprietary formats, and like MP3 I'm sure Microsoft would be very happy to license the technology to you if you wanted to encorporate it in your product.
Also, Microsoft does create a WMA capable player for the Macintosh, so you can hardly say it's not used in other operating systems.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh puh-leeze!
Nobody screwed over Be, as it was never a real contender.
I have BeOS version 3 and 4 at home, and while they were pretty cool I never found anybody who was remotely interested in them except some really perverse geeks like myself. Even the anti-MS Linux zealots universally derided it every time it was mentioned on slashdot.
Now this Scot Hacker might blame Microsoft for preventing dual boot, but it would not have mattered. If OEMs had installed BeOS on their systems along with Windows, they would have simply received a few million phone calls asking how they could free up the used space.
There was even talk at one time of Apple adopting Be, but instead went with this OS-X. But even then I don't believe Apple screwed over Be, because BeOS wasn't ready to replace MacOS and it needed the Apple commitment.
Be lacked applications, hardware drivers and all sorts of things which were necessary for it to succeed. But what it lacked most of all was a problem that needed to be solved that only it could do.
Nobody screwed Be over. Be was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong solution.
"even transfers to/from other machines linked directly to the same 100mbit switch, are noticeably slower, using samba, ftp.exe and cuteftp.. "
Hmm, I can saturate my 100baseT connection doing an ftp between my WinXP box and a Win2k server. That is, I'm seeing nearly 10Meg/sec transfer rates. I don't know you can expect faster than that.
"Remote assistance, sure.. but you had terminal server in win2k anyway"
Terminal server is not available for Win2k Pro. Comparable functionality would come from PCAnywhere, or VNC. Although VNC is very slow even on a local LAN.
"i still have a lot of older windows and dos software which won`t run, mostly games."
No, direct hardware access is not going to be available under any modern OS because it causes instabilities. But WinXP has better support for older Win95 software that didn't exist in Win2k.
"The "improved" user interface you speak of, is actually slower than the previous one"
Actually no it's not. Not with a modern video card anyway, and from a user perspective it's more efficient.
"garbage which makes it look like it was designed for children"
No, that would be Gnome and KDE.
"There are certified win2k drivers for my ATI Mach64 card (with tv in/out), yet there are no XP drivers... "
Well using a Mach64 would explain why you think the UI is slower. The ATI Rage I had at work was a dog. I have a Radeon 7500 at home which works very nicely.
That's too bad about compatibility. Moving forward, however, since WinXP is now the standard platform for both home and business users you will not see this problem. Already I've encountered a number of things which have XP support, but no support for 2k.(such as the HP Scanjet 2100c, and some digital cameras)
While I agree that WinXP(and even WinNT and Win2k) work much better with large amounts of RAM(I recommend at a minimum 256Megs)... RAM is cheap.
I can't imagine buying a computer today with less than 512Megs of RAM. Mine all have 768 Megs which is the max they hold.
Now back when I spent over $500 to buy 16 Megs so I could run OS/2, Linux and Win95... yeah RAM prices were a big deal. That was six years ago.
"The fact that XP is advertised as not crashing just shows MS's previous incompetence. "
So the fact that Linux now has a journaled filesystem is not a selling point because of past incompetence? The fact that all the problems identified after the Mindcraft benchmark is not a selling point because of past incompetence?
That makes no sense.
While your theory that users don't need much functionality may work in theory... it doesn't hold in practice.
The instance Joe from accounting asks his buddy Bob who works at Company X how he does something, and Bob sends him a sample Excel spreadsheet that doesn't work on Joe's computer... someone is going to ask "Why aren't we using standard software?"
For a company I worked at back in 1996 that was standardized on OS/2 and Lotus Smartsuite, this is what pushed them into migration to NT4 with Office 97.
That and the HR people had a hard time finding people trained in AmiPro, but no problem finding people already trained in Word.
Good luck with your migration plan, but I hope you have a backout strategy already devised.
"What company has said "We won't release our API because Microsoft told us not to"?"
None. This is a standard tactic of the anti-MS contingent. They blame anything and everything wrong with the IT industry on Microsoft. Doesn't matter if it's true or not.
It's one of the reasons why this anti-trust lawsuit has become such a joke. The latest is that Palm and Nokia are whining about Microsoft because of their own companies inability to innovate or make smart decisions. (hint: Palm is losing more marketshare to Handspring than PocketPC, whose fault is that? Nokia clobbered Motorola who is now regaining marketshare with new products)
Faster, better support for hardware and software(especially games and older stuff with new compatibility options), improved user interface, improved manageability, remote assistance, and so on.
Despite rumors to the contrary, they aren't even close.
But then your analysis depends on what you mean by "Windows".
:)
Are you talking about Windows 98, or Windows XP? The two are quite different. You appear to refer to Windows 98.
On the other hand Windows XP plays games, does not crash, will run all their favorite software, is useful to those who know what they are doing, considered faster and more reliable, generally more suited to business and (especially) software development.
So why do we compare them when we already have a solution that is great for all practical uses?
You obviously don't visit the right audiophile websites. Try $2400 for speaker cable.
Besides, no audiophile in their right mind would be caught dead buying crap from Monster Cable. Sheesh! Not when there is stuff even more expensive out there. :)
However, in all seriousness. A lot of these audiophile components do have some basis in fact. The problem is that they take the fact and extend it with a more is better philosophy. The more being price, rather than actual substance.
Quality cables do make a difference. We know this is the case with ethernet cables, although you don't need to spend what Monster asks for ethernet cables. Now I did replace the cables on my CD player from the ones that came in the box to Monster Cables I paid $20 for and it honestly did make a noticeable difference in sound. Now I might have seen the same benefit from a $10 pair of cables, who knows. But moving to $900 cables very likely has diminishing returns.
On the otherhand the more expensive cables do have the benefit that they look cool. Some people are willing to spend a lot of money for something that looks cool but adds no real substance.
It's also not surprising that a mechanical device such as a CD transport may be susceptible to vibration. But again, do you need to spend $1,000 to properly isolate it? Maybe not setting the CD player on top of the speakers is enough?
Really I'm surprised you didn't mention the myth of the Green Marker.
What were the provisions of the first consent decree?
" links between people suffering from high functioning aspergers syndrome and people who work in professions such as IT"
3 21 5&mode=thread
7 21 3&mode=thread
Good grief, like two years ago on slashdot there was an article from a professor which explained this link.
Here it is:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/09/13/122
and another one:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=99/09/27/134
"Are going to tell me that those institutions don't constitute coercion? "
Yes, they don't involve coercion.
You have a choice, you can buy the product or not buy the product.
Copyrights and patents protect the creator from you stealing their hard efforts without just compensation.
"BTW, don't quote me. These words belong to me."
Isn't that hypocritical? Besides under fair use doctrine, I'm allowed to quote you.
It appears the one trying to coerce, is yourself.
"Now, Windows makes up about 10 to 20% of total system costs, if you add in Office, it is as high as 50%. "
So what?
I spend more money on CDs than my CD player cost.
I spend more money on DVDs than my DVD player cost.
I spent more money on vinyl than my turntable cost.
I spent more money on VHS tapes than my VCR cost, especially if you count rentals.
I spent more money on books than my lamp and glasses cost.
The GNU organization stands for coercion, which is a threat to liberty.
I quote: "Low-paying organizations do poorly in competition with high-paying ones, but they do not have to do badly if the high-paying ones are banned."
That is a quote from the GNU Manifesto, it goes on further to rail against people who ask money for their work and how these people shall be outlawed as well.
"If I collect a bunch of sticks and buy a bunch of yarn and busy myself making god's eyes twelve hourse a day, do I "deserve" to get paid for it?"
Well you've certainly confused the issue by taking a very anal approach to reading comprehension.
The point was obviously that you DON'T have the right to use the other guys work without asking permission. It is quite possible the granting of permission may be commiserate with a payment of sorts, in fact in a capitalist society it usually is.
Yes, let the market decide. But the market is not supposed to involve coercion.
News for Nerds. Stuff that matters.
It's not "Stuff that matters, but only about Linux."
Bah, this is something that royally bugs me, people who base their opinion on Windows NT from what happened in MS-DOS.
Look, it's time for you to move on. MS-DOS has been a deadend for like 10 years.
"As proof, please anybody give me a company that has been able to work long time with Microsoft?"
:)
Symantec, Network Associates, Adobe, Dell, Compaq, SAP, Peoplesoft... more than 10,000 other companies...
It seems as though you are a bit naive.
What's more likely to happen is Ximian becomes important to Microsoft and they buy them out. Wow will that ever piss off RMS.
"So is Ximian abandoning the GNU values?"
It's no secret that Miguel is somewhat disenchanted with Richard Stallman.
"Actually, by charging $15 for their product, it ceases to be a free-time/hobby contribution and starts to be a product. "
Well this is certainly true.
I think from the perspective of the AbiWord developers they certainly may not wish to work on a project and are satisfied with working on this as a hobby. I know the few open source projects I have worked on, such is the case. It's a good learning experience, it kills some free time, etc.
Certainly charging brings forward a certain responsibility that one may not want.
But therein lies the paradox that is Open Source. If it is a hobby, you have unlimited freedom to do that wish you please. But this is not what consumers are going to accept or expect, they want support and continued improvements, bug fixes and such in a timely manner.
So it all goes back to the zealotry and overselling that the original poster commented on.
I simply offered the alternative reality of essentially shareware.
I think all these models can, and have been, successful and do not see why one model must dominate over others. You evaluate the needs and the risk and use what is acceptable to you.
Now wait a minute. Based off your User # you've obviously been reading slashdot for a while.
Don't you realize you are speaking heresy?
I think you've hit upon the fundamental problem with Open Source. It's not that Open Source is a bad thing, it can actually be quite good. But it's ridiculous to assume it will ever completely replace the commercial software market. Or even have a signifigant impact upon it because of consumer expectations.
I've never used AbiWord and don't know what it's like. But imagine what these guys could do if instead of giving it away for free, they sold it for $15 off their website.
It may not make them rich, but I'll bet that could provide a steady income for a handful of people who could work full time to continuously improve the product.
Furthermore, by charging $15 for a product, they limit their user base to only those people who feel the product is worth something. But they also will realize that it's substantially cheaper than Word and won't expect quite all the same features.
I think one of the problems with catering to just the whackos who think everything should be free, is that these people think stuff should be free because they identify no value with the product or really the developers time.
It's the old complaint about Welfare. When people receive $500/week from the government for not working, they don't see any value in actually working. Now not everybody thinks that way, but there is a substantial sub-culture of the world that does.
"it will be hard to argue that MS's monopolistic position in the OS business was not used to force a position in the console business."
But so what?
If the reason why the monopoly was extended is because the product is superior, how has this harmed consumers?
"However, once competition is eliminated the cost of games can (to a point) become arbitrarily high,"
I've often seen this claim made, but it's never played out in reality. It's not a truth so much as it is fear-mongering. The only time period I can even think of in which these practices occured in the micro computer world was the 1980's. At that time there was plenty of competition, but you were much more locked down into a single vendor. The costs were high, the innovations were slow in coming, you were locked into platforms, etc.
In around 1990 my friends and I lamented that the computer world had become boring. It's really only been in the past 5 years that this has drastically changed. In a large part due to the internet, but also because of the increased quality and lower pricing of hardware which has allowed much more to be done.
Yet this past 5 years has been the time when Microsoft's monopoly has been undeniably secure, even moreso in the past two years with the release of Win2k and XP as they eliminated the complaints of stability and reliability from their critics.
If anything, I guess I would probably have to say that corporations tend towards just the opposite. Compelling lock-in, increased costs(especially to switch platforms) and so on when they are young and growing and most fearful of their future success. This loosening up helps to maintain their consumer satisfaction, whereas a tightening up would tend more to push disatisfaction and get people to buy competitors products.
But as the company matures, realizes it's position in the world is not at risk, they become more innovative, loosening standards, propelling forth new R&D, new innovations, taking more risks with their products and so forth.
In addition to Microsoft the other example I would use of this corporate maturity in action is IBM who is still very large, but has become a very solid innovator in recent years and leveraging their economies of scale to consumer benefit.
Now in the automobile market, I would say you were correct. The Big three consolidated and tightened down the screws on consumers into the 1970's. Not much innvoation, higher costs boring products and so forth. But this also compelled consumers to buy Japanese cars and caused GM's 50% marketshare to drop to 25%.
The tech market is slightly different because there is a much lower barrier to entry into the market than with automobile sales. You don't need $10 billion in startup capital to build a factory and create a car design.
Witness the succes of Linux...
"Don't you get that feeling that some of these people are former TeamOS/2 ers? "
You mean people like Nicholas Petreley and Joe Barr? No! Not possible!
"Why is it that when one simply states the fact that M$ has the historically poorest security record for its products than any other company in the same field of endeavor"
It is untrue when you consider the fact that RedHat has released something like 72 security vulnerabilities for Linux in 2001 versus the 57 security bulletins that Microsoft has released for all of their products.
And actually the RedHat number would be quite a bit higher, but instead of modifying bulletins on their site to say they have been superceded, they instead delete them. Based on their numbering system, one could easily assume they have released 160 bulletins this year about their product.
So the simple fact is, RedHat has a much worse security record than Microsoft. By extenstion that implies Linux is far more insecure than Windows.
"They are also leveraging the fact that it is easier to port a Windows PC game to Xbox (and vica versa) because the Xbox is basically a specialized...Windows PC! "
I don't think you quite understand what leveraging means, and how it is bad.
Leveraging a companies ability to more efficiently create something, is not what the Sherman anti-trust law was about. Efficiency in production and lower expenses are pro-consumer.
When they speak of leveraging, it means things like forcing anybody who wants to buy Windows XP to also buy an X-Box, thereby more than doubling the cost of Windows XP. These types of activities are generally not condoned. It's sort of like if you take a loan out from a bank, the bank can't force you to also buy life insurance. Banks used to do that, but it's now explicitly illegal. Why? Because it's anti-consumer as it forces the consumer to buy something they don't want to get something they need.
Besides, claiming WMA is proprietary and MP3 is not is not at all accurate. They are both proprietary formats, and like MP3 I'm sure Microsoft would be very happy to license the technology to you if you wanted to encorporate it in your product.
Also, Microsoft does create a WMA capable player for the Macintosh, so you can hardly say it's not used in other operating systems.