I really wish vendors made better use of scheduled tasks for update checking.
That's what a package manager is for. No really. The only problem is, neither OS X, or Windows ships with a good package manager, and the common Linux ones generally are useless for commercial software and most things downloaded from the Web instead of from a repository.
I go weeks without ever logging out (just lock the screensaver). Also, don't you think it is an unnecessary security risk and resource drain for everyone to implement this individually? This should be part of the OS, along with install/uninstall, dependency management, and licensing/registration of applications. The fact that it is not is just more evidence of how slow progress in desktop OS development really is.
The law makes the act of breaking the encryption illegal in the US.
I don't think that is accurate. From the summary Groklaw posted long time ago, breaking encryption yourself is legal, but distributing tools to break it is banned. I could be wrong, but that is what I recall.
Apple really missed the mark with this one here. At $1000-1200, it's reasonable but at %50 more it becomes laughable.
I think Apple hit it's mark, you're just not it's mark. That's okay I'm not either. I'm not concerned about size or weight all that much. I have a MacBook and if they had a model twice as thick and twice as heavy for $200 less, I'd have bought it. That doesn't mean the market for small and thin doesn't exist. I know those people and they're probably not who you think. A senior engineer/software architect I recently worked with did not get a Mac as his last laptop because he will only consider the extremely small form factor machines (like Sony's tiny one he has now). He doesn't care about looks either, but he is more of a manager now than an engineer. He wants something tiny that will fit in a briefcase, check e-mail, surf the web, run terminals and project management software and read files and create and show presentations and play mp3s. Price is not a big concern since the company will buy it for him. I'll bet you this machine will be his next purchase.
I see, it auto syncs changed files between the devices and the time capsule, yeah that is kinda cool, thanks for replying
No problem. I suppose I shouldn't expect everyone knows how Time Machine works. It is actually nicer than it sounds because it saves the backup and each of the changes until it runs out of space, so if you change a file and want the old version back after the backup has synched, you can still access the previous versions, much like a versioning system. OS X 10.5 has both a nice interface to it, and an API so programs can access it through that program's interface (like undoing changes to photoshop files beyond the last time you saved and quit working on it).
So they put a hard disk into an airport extreme, and added $120 to the cost (500GB version). For that price you can buy your own external USB disk.
Yeah, pretty much, then again you end up with two enclosures and the USB is another, potential bottleneck. Also, you can buy an external 7200 RPM.5 terabyte SATA drive for $120... barely if you buy the cheapest one from the cheapest place you know. Apple tends to have a bit higher quality parts (according to independent reliability testing from consumer reports).
what can be easier than (windows) right-click, share this folder on the network or in KDE right-click share, share this, use samba?
Umm, I think you missed the point. We're talking about automated backups of changed files across wireless. Plugging this thing in, then clicking Time machine to "on" and selecting it is a lot easier than any other solution I've seen.
The OS wouldn't have nearly the lock in without the monopoly of the office component. The office component has no reason to remain exclusive to Windows, and will do a better job of seeking markets in alternative operating systems.
Umm, I disagree. MSOffice is already available for OS X (and many people feel that version better than the Windows version). If there are two things WINE on Linux runs well those are IE and MS Office.
The application lock-in on Windows is not MS Office. It is all the games, niche applications, IE, and all the applications users have already purchased which will be non-functional.
Well, it's illegal to rip DVDs.... and you won't be able to rent a DVD at the downstairs Blockbuster when your hotel's internet connection gets you a lovely 75 KB/s.
Actually, I don't believe this is true. According to the DMCA it is illegal to distribute tools used to break CSS, but I don't think actually breaking it is illegal. Also, that only applies in the US, and (finally) some of the new Blueray/HD-DVD discs are supposedly starting to ship with an mpeg file on them that iTunes can just grab and load onto your iPod (and I'll bet this new sub-notebook).
The summary missed one of the new products, called "time capsule." It is basically an 802.11n wireless hub/Gb ethernet hub, with a built in hard drive for use with Time Machine to auto-backup all your macs. It's going for $500 for a terabyte, or $300 for a half terabyte. It is, of course, a small form factor without room for more drives. It will probably be the only backup solution that will really be easy enough for most of the home market, but not really all that cool for Slashdot types.
Perhaps the best way to return value to the shareholders would be to break up into individual companies. That is, the OS part of microsoft will be its own company, the business productivity part of MSFT will be its own company, etc. Shareholders will get to own shares in all pieces, and Microsoft will not be able to leverage its monopoly in one crucial market to impose standards on the others.
That is a short-term solution because the OS part and the Office part and the browser part have monopoly influence on their respective markets, with the OS part having the most lock-in. I think breaking the company up is a good idea, but at least two of the new companies should have the rights to the OS, with new patents and code forking as they go forward. This would instantly restore competition to the market.
Imagine you're a buyer for Dell or Ford. Instead of deciding if you should buy WinXP or Vista from the OS part of MS, you could ask both of the two new companies to bid on the contract to supply your OS of choice, with the cheaper one getting your cash. Imagine that!...MS having to compete for the lowest price.
I don't think your solution would work because it doesn't really address the core problem, MS's desktop OS monopoly and all the lock-in it has created. I think it would be more productive to break up MS, but to give at least two of the new companies complete rights to the copyrights, patents, and trademarks for their OS. Then we end up with two different Windows vendors competing against one another to make the best version. You can buy Windows A or Windows B based upon features and price and even take competing bids from them on large contracts. The OS monopoly is not just set back, but actually broken.
...the problem isn't including apps, it's using your OS monopoly to out-compete other app vendors
Actually it's using your monopoly to not compete with other app vendors, but to win market share based upon artificial problems introduced to other vendor's apps using your monopoly.
Doesn't even need to be downloaded. Just include them on install CD/HDD, and let the user choose what to install when Windows first runs.
Actually, that would still be illegal unless all competing products were included in this package as well.
Add to it a kinda robust package manager that can connect to the internet(which people would be forced to see at least once, so they will be likely to look to it), and now not only do they get around all the anti-trust bundling stuff, but they still get to leverage free(as in beer) products and services to their customers.
MS probably would add a package manager, but again if it comes with MS's repository pre-configured, then it has to come with competing repositories pre-configured as well to be in compliance with the law.
Could even turn it into a revenue stream, by letting closed developers place products in it, for a fee of course.
This isn't direct bundling, but it is still tying. If a competitor has to pay a fee to get their product easily downloadable, but MS gets to do so for free because they are the OS creators, then MS is still unfairly leveraging that position.
Similar systems have done a lot of make linux easier to use.
Agreed, default package mangers would be a boon to both Windows and OS X.
Not that it will happen of course, but I think it could be made to their benefit and that of their customers--without being too evil or anti-competitive.
Hopefully the courts will prevent them from implementing an anticompetitive version of this in the first place.
How can I be "wrong" when I never even made a claim?
You're "wrong" because your post was predicated upon the assumption that "bundling" was illegal.
By comparison, Apple would seem (at least on the surface) to be more guilty of using their OS to gain market hold on many areas of software outside of the OS.
See, you're still doing it. Sure Apple is using their OS to gain market share in other areas, but that doesn't undermine the free market and is not illegal, because Apple doesn't have a monopoly on desktop OS's. The word "guilty" implies a crime. Apple is not committing a crime by bundling things with their OS. Your error is in making that assumption and in so doing misunderstanding both the letter and intent of antitrust law.
Listen, you seem to be having trouble understanding me. I'll be really clear. Abusing a monopoly is illegal, regardless of if you do it via bundling or some other mechanism. Bundling is not illegal, unless it is being used as a way to undermine the market. Your posts both make it clear you've not really understood this so far. Here's an analogy that might help. Going into a house and taking a $20 bill of the kitchen table is not illegal in and of itself. Stealing is illegal. So if person A goes into a house and takes a twenty they own, they haven't broken the law. If Person B goes into someone else's house and take a twenty they don't own, they've broken the law and committed theft. It is the exact same action, taken under different circumstances. When half the people on a forum then write about how sure person B took a twenty, but person A did the exact same thing and hasn't been arrested, it is incredibly frustrating. I realize that antitrust law is not as well understood as stealing laws, but it isn't rocket science either. MS and Apple both follow the same laws and the laws have been applied fairly so far. Please understand that the criminal action is undermining a market by bundling a monopolized product and a non-monopolized product, not bundling two products that are not monopolized.
Of course, let say instead of buying from OEM I buy Windows on a CD... I don't have a browser yet. How am I going to go and download one exactly?
Assuming you are such a user, you probably already have a different computer, since 99% of people cannot install an OS by themselves. Here are your options, use a different computer to get it, get a free CD with a browser on it (which everyone will start giving away), go to Best Buy and get a free CD there, use the CD provided by your ISP, use an FTP program to grab one, use a package manager to grab one from a repository (want to bet MS would not add such a package manager?), or use some other method I haven't thought of yet.
I fully understand your point, but its simply not viable.
Yes it is. You may think this will be a problem for users, but I'm sorry practically no one installs their own OS these days. If you do, you are part of a tiny fraction of a percent of people and I'll bet you have a computer already that you can use to load a browser from the internet, don't you?
Programming frameworks and server software not being bundled?
Programming frameworks are used by developers, which is a smaller, more savvy group yet. Server software is too vague of a term and we'll have to wait and see what they mean by it. MS was convicted of abusing their monopoly to gain share in the server OS market, which is probably what they were referring to. There isn't much point addressing your comments with regard to that since it was not defined and since i was speculation about what types of software the EU would investigate for possible problems.
If a default install for any OS doesn't include a media player, a browser, networking stacks, as many runtimes as possible, basic text editors, etc, its incomplete, seriously.
Nope. A computer system is an OS, a bunch of applications, drivers for hardware, and the hardware itself. That is what most users buy. If you like building your own systems on whiteboxes, great, but it will take you one extra step of keeping a CD full of your applications, which most people who install whiteboxes do anyway. Alternately, you can just install a package manager, or MS could install one themselves and make things easy on you.
The only thing i find important is that MS has to make darn sure that OEMs -can- bundle other stuff, and that the APIs are open, and I realise MS hasn't been perfect in this regard, far from it, and they need to improve there.
That is not sufficient to establish free market competition. OEMs must not only be able to add software and remove software, they must be forced to specifically choose which software they want to add to their bundle and they must make that choice without being influenced by MS's monopoly, based upon the individual merits of the software packages. That is a requirement for a capitalist market to function and generate the levels of innovation that occur naturally in markets without the influence of a monopoly.
If I type a web address in the explorer, Firefox will pop up if its my default browser.
Good for you, but you don't represent the rest of the market. Most users don't know that is even an option, or why they would want that to happen. Most users assume all markets are free, capitalist markets and so don't investigate if there is a better browser. They assume if there is abetter browser, Dell would have installed it, just as they assume if there were a cheaper, faster engine, Ford would have put it in their car. The problem is, the Web browser market among many others, is not a free, capitalist market. It is a market that has been illegally influenced by a monopolist in another market. So consumers suffer and the market as a whole stagnates. No one invests significant capital in the market, because competing against a monopoly costs a lot of money, has higher risks than other investments, and returns less
At the end of the day antitrust legislation is about being pro consumer. It's not a cut-and-dried set of "you can and can't do foo with your product if you're a monopoly.
Actually it is very cut and dried. It is illegal to leverage a monopoly in one market to gain share in another existing market. That's really all you need to know.
There is, however, public interest in ensuring that what's bundled isn't preventing competition or damaging the value to the consumer in some other form.
Lets see, MS has single handedly held back Web technologies by about a decade by bundling IE and refusing to even completely implement 8 year old standards. According to leaked memos they did this to intentionally keep the Web crippled so that Web applications cannot be used to bypass their OS monopoly breaking their lock-in via software availability. I'd say that's pretty damaging, wouldn't you?
Making Windows have a far worse out-of-the-box experience (e.g. removing key functionality such as web browsing) is not pro consumer.
"Out-of-box" experience is not really very important. MS's customers fall mostly into two categories: OEMs (like Dell and Sony) and enterprises (like the state of Ohio or Ford). Neither of these uses the systems as they are, but instead installs it along with a variety of other software using special deployment tools. The end user whether a Dell computer buyer or a worker at Ford gets a system that has all the features they need as determined by the person deploying it. The point of this antitrust action is to make sure those real customers (Dell or Ford) not only have the option of installing Firefox instead of IE or WinAmp instead of WMP, but they have to make that choice on a level playing field where only the merits of the software influences their decision. In this way, two things happen. First, the customers pick the "best" software for their users instead of using whatever MS pre-installed. Second, both MS and other developers know these people will pick what they think is the best and will compete to make their software better than the others, motivating innovation.
In a healthy market a software vendor can't let their Web browser stagnate for four years without adding any new features, during the height of the internet explosion. This action is about making sure MS and everyone else is motivated by cold hard cash to make the best products possible. Currently MS relies not on the merits of their software but on their ability to abuse their monopoly. Why would they spend the money to make their product the best when users will mostly use it anyway due to their bundling? You need to remove MS's ability to rely upon that bundling to get them to compete and make good products. That is what this is about.
The EU constantly picks on Microsoft because it's a company we love to hate and they have deep pockets.
No they prosecute MS because MS constantly breaks the law and other companies complain to them, knowing the US courts have been paid off.
What about Apple? I mean, isn't SpotLight "bundled" as part of Leopard?
Sure it is, but "bundling" isn't illegal in and of itself. Leveraging a monopoly in one market into another market is illegal and if you have a monopoly, bundling is one way to do it. Apple doesn't even compete in the desktop OS market, since they refuse to sell OS X to Dell or any other OEM. Apple does compete in the "desktop computer system" market against Dell and HP and Sony, but they certainly don't have a monopoly there, so there is no way such bundling can be illegal.
Why aren't they filing probes against an even bigger brother??
That shows what you know. The EU does have an ongoing probe against Apple, not for their OS since it is not a monopoly, but with regards to their iPod line, which at 70% is close to being a monopoly on portable digital music players. If they decide Apple has enough influence, they will charge Apple for bundling the iTunes software with iPods and for tying it to the iTunes store.
The EU investigates lots of companies for antitrust abuse. If you her about MS being charged more often their are two reasons, one it is more likely to be reported in the news sites you read, and two, MS has built their entire business model on breaking antitrust law and hoping the fines are smaller than the money it makes them.
I wonder if/when governments are going to start going after Apple. OS X is 10x "worse" than Windows when it comes to bundled software. I use "worse" lightly, of course, because I actually want bundled software.
Please ignore most of the other replies to your post. They don't know what they're talking about and while you're wrong, it is not for the reasons they put forward.
Bundling software is no more illegal than shooting a gun (to use an analogy I've already used here today). What is illegal is leveraging a monopoly in one market to gain share in a separate, existing market. Bundling is one way to do that. To continue my analogy, it is illegal to kill and injure other people without provocation. Shooting people is one way to injure or kill them.
MS competes in the OS market against, well pretty much no one but a few Linux distros. They have overwhelming share of this market. Their customers are OEMs (like Dell, HP, and Sony) and large enterprises (like AT&T or UCLA) who are installing an OS on whiteboxes. Apple, refuses to sell their OS in this market (for very good economic reasons I won't explain here). If you were CEO of Dell, what OS would you buy to pre-install for your customers that would not result in you being fired within a month? Yup, just Windows, thus they have a monopoly and can control those OEMs and gouge them.
Apple sells their OS in a box, but only licensed to run on Apple computers, so really they're selling OS X upgrades. Mostly, they sell complete systems which compete with Dell and HP and Sony. You can buy a complete system from Apple or from Sony, thus they don't have anything approaching a monopoly in that market. Now this is not to say Apple does not have to follow the same laws. Apple, like MS, is forbidden from leveraging a monopoly in one market into another market. Apple has about 70% market share of portable music players, which is just about where governments tend to start investigating. Apple is currently being investigated and if they are found to have monopoly influence in that market, they'll be forbidden from bundling iTunes software or tying the iTunes store (via DRM and the iTunes software). Contrary to the opinions of others, the rules don't change and aren't being applied only to MS. You just have to know the rules are against leveraging monopolies, not bundling.
Now how does this affect you personally and your desires? Well, antitrust law doesn't stop OEMs, like Dell from bundling, since they don't have a monopoly to abuse. So if you want more bundled software tell OEMs that and go with the OEM that bundles the software you want. (Assuming there are not secret agreements with MS forcing OEMs not to install some of the software you want, which is likely one of the things that will be investigated by the EU) and hence may lead to you getting more bundled software, and more importantly, better quality bundled software since instead of IE and WMP, some OEMs will be able to install Firefox and WinAmp or even Opera and Banshee.
The end result of antitrust action is to make sure you get more choices, better choices, and lower prices. Wouldn't you like to buy a copy of Windows that does not come with IE and WMP and is reduced in price to reflect the cost MS pays to develop those programs, while still getting free software that does the same task? Wouldn't it be nice if companies had a financial incentive to invest in these markets again and produce premium software? Wouldn't it be nice if Microsoft actually devoted significant resources to making IE the best browser instead of letting it sit with no improvements for a decade? Wouldn't it be nice if when MS introduced anti-features designed to hurt their customers and profit MS, they lost market share as a result and thus were motivated to not do that anymore?
I hope this has cleared up some of your confusion.
I really think it would have been better for Microsoft as a company if the DOJ had broken them up.
I doubt it, at least financially. Monopolies allow you to make money without creating anything of benefit to customers.
Microsoft can no longer do anything without the specture of Anti-trust law looming.
This just isn't true. MS has a lot of lawyers and the law is clear. They know when the way they introduce products is antitrust abuse and when it is not and they tend towards the former because they know it will make them more money. Nothing at all stops MS from creating new products, not tied to monopolized ones and competing fairly with them... it is just less profitable. MS isn't accidentally breaking antitrust law, they are a lot more informed than the average Slashdot reader. They do it willfully, betting the penalties will not be bigger than the profits, and they've been right every time so far.
I also think two or three Microsofts would more then[sic] likely suck all the oxygen out room just as much as the one monolith does; but at least we might see some real progress.
Two or three Microsofts would compete with each other and we'd get better products as a result.
Over the last six to eight years we have gotten just about exactly nothing from Microsoft of real value.
Why would they bother? It is easier and more profitable to leverage products into other markets, rather than create something good enough to compete fairly. DRM doesn't help MS's customers, but it does let them move into the media downloads market. Why work on user features when anti-features make more cash?
I'm not saying that MS was not guilty of antitrust violations. I am asking though what are the merits of the new accusation? Is it the same accusation, or is it different?
One of the charges is the same thing MS was convicted of in the US, but has not been charged with in the EU. Previously the EU convicted them of abuse in the server OS market and audio player software markets. They are now looking into web browsers (which they've been convicted of in the US) and other, unnamed markets.
Frankly, the market has change SIGNIFICANTLY, for better or worse, than it was in the mid 90's. Consumers expect browsers included in the OS.
Back in the day, consumers expected to have to rent a standardized, rotary phone from the phone company, not to be able to buy any phone from the store. It has nothing to do with what is legal or best for the market.
Yes, OEMs should be able to include other browsers with their systems.
Sorry, not good enough. OEMs need to consider MS's software on an even playing field with other software, with no incentive to include o not include it other than the merits of the software. The market needs to be a level playing field for everyone, or the law is being broken. OEMs should include or not include IE because they think their customers will prefer it based on its merits, not based upon artificial problems introduced into competitors (broken standards in use). If IE is included, OEMs may simply leave it and not bother making the choice and consumers will suffer and developers will still target IE because they know it will be included, while they don't know if a different browser will be. They have to bundle all of them or none of them or the market will still be broken.
it's hard to argue that with competitors doing well in the EU: adoption of FireFox ranges from 20 - 40% in some member countries
Yes, and a lot worse in other EU countries. So you consider say 30% market share, versus 60% market share when the one with 30% is faster, has dozens of features the other lacks, is more secure, and properly reads pages while IE does not, and has been that way for many years. I'd say when it takes MS six years to implement something as simple and widely acclaimed as tabbed browsing windows, that competitors are not doing well to have only 30% of the market (and that 30% is pretty generous).
If Opera were doing as well, I would imagine that they wouldn't complain.
You completely mistake Opera's market. Opera makes most of their money selling an embedded browser of phones and the like. They sell fewer browsers because they can't handle all the pages broken to work with IE and can prove that in court. They do fairly well in that space, but are still losing largely to embedded IE based upon artificial problems, not real problems with their browser.
If IE were really so abusive these days, would they have such viable competition?
All of their competition has to give away their browser just to enter the market since everyone is forced to pay for IE's development when they buy Windows. As it is, most of the big competitors were started by frustrated users as a way to get another option since no business felt entering the market against an abusive monopoly was worthwhile.
Can you tell me one good reason why MS should be able to force every windows machine to ship with IE, but the Firefox team and Opera can't force every Windows machine to ship with their products? MS does it simply because they have a monopoly and no one stops them from leveraging it. As a result, we all suffer. IE 7 still doesn't implement 8 year old standards every other browser has complied with basically forever. Moreover, there is evidence this is an intentional attempt to keep the Web itself crippled so that people can't bypass their desktop OS monopoly using web based apps. You don't see the Web itself being crippled and held bac
To your comparison to Apple and such, you'll get a bunch of "When you're a conficted illegal monopolist, the rules change" answers".
Well sort of. Actually the rules don't change. The rules just don't apply in most cases. The "rules" say that it is illegal to leverage a monopoly in one market to gain share in another market. Since most companies aren't monopolies, they don't have to worry about this law.
I mean come on, an OS without built in media player or browser?
Something most people seem to be missing is the law applies to MS, not to OEMs like Dell or Gateway. They are free to bundle IE or Firefox or WinAmp or whatever they like, so this would not be a problem for most users.
IE sucking balls is the only freagin reason Firefox or Opera have been able to pick up...if it was NOT bundled, but it actually rocked (I know, its hard to imagine), Firefox and Opera would never have been able to gain any Windows market share...
This is true, but it doesn't spell out a very important point. By forcing MS to compete on even ground with other offerings, you force MS to make IE better instead of relying on bundling. This is important so I'll repeat it. This provides direct, monetary incentive for both Microsoft and other software makers to invest in making better browsers, which is a big win for users, regardless of which browser they end up using.
All this garbage is pushing it. Its definately a GOOD thing to keep Microsoft in check, but push it too far and you start hurting the customers. For what? To help other companies, which is just moving the problem around: customers still lose.
And this is why my previous point is so important. When the bundle is put together by the user or by an OEM, their incentive is to give the user the best software so that people will buy their bundle instead of a competitor's. Competition results in better products, otherwise; extreme socialism would have killed capitalism. Capitalism's major virtue is that it used greed and laziness and self-interest to motivate better products... which it does very well until a monopoly appears. That is why we have the law in the first place. When Bell telephone was broken up, what happened? All of a sudden prices dropped, new services became available, and people stopped renting a crappy rotary phone for a huge amount of money and started picking up cheap phones with answering machines and autodial and speaker modes. If MS is stopped from bundling, all those markets in which it has a bundled or tied solution (jukebox software, web browsers, programming frameworks, server software, video players) will innovate faster and have better, cheaper products. That is the whole point of enforcing these laws.
And how on earth are they supposed to include the apps their users expect without "using your OS monopoly to out-compete other app vendors"?
By offering them as free downloads and by convincing OEMs that your product is the best so they should install it for their users... you know the same as every other software vendor on the planet that doesn't have a monopoly to abuse.
I dont get this whole idea that including applications with your OS is somehow evil.
That's because you don't understand the law or the reasons for it. Including applications with an OS is no more illegal than firing a rifle is illegal. It is just that in some cases (when you're abusing a monopoly) it breaks the market and thus we've passed a law making it illegal, just as firing a rifle into another person kills them, and we've passed a law making that illegal. It isn't including applications with an OS that is illegal, it is abusing a monopoly in one market to break free trade in another market that is illegal; just as it is not firing a gun into another person that is illegal, but murder and assault by any means that is illegal.
There are certain things that the average user expects to be able to do with a PC out of the box. Things like browsing the internet, playing a media file, etc.
Probably 80% of computers come with an OS pre-installed and nothing stops the OEM from including any applications they like, including those made by Microsoft, so this doesn't affect those users. Probably 15% are bought by businesses who use automated install tools so this does not affect them. The only people this might inconvenience is people who buy whitebox PCs and install a boxed copy of Windows and who want to use one of those currently bundled applications. If those people aren't competent enough to get or make a copy of IE on CD to install, then they also probably aren't competent enough to install an OS in the first place.
It is kind of like telling auto manufacturers that they cannot include built in AC, CD player, or any other ameneties with their cars because it kills the third party market even though these are things that consumers expect to come with their cars.
No it isn't. Like 99% of all analogies in this thread you have tried equate the behavior of a company that does not have a monopoly in any market bundling products, with a company that does have a monopoly bundling. They are not the same at all, which is why one is legal and one is illegal.
Try your analogy with something that is a monopoly, like your local power distribution company. Suppose they decided to go into the air conditioner market as well. Suppose they stopped selling the service of hooking up electricity to new houses and started selling a bundle which included power hookup and a "free" air conditioner, for only $8000 more than their old power hookup service. Further assume you're in the AC selling business. Does that sound fair to you? After all, some users can still install solar panels and buy an air conditioner from you. Other customers could throw away the air conditioner they got from the power company and buy one from you. If you were in the air conditioner sales and installation market, you wouldn't complain about that, would you?
So far as I know, only a few browsers are completely standards compliant.
No, I doubt any browser is, but have you ever done any Web development? If you create pages based upon the standards and then test 99% of the time it will work just fine in every browser except IE, where it never works. MS doesn't even try and the leaked internal e-mails show that this is intentional.
...with the announcement that IE 8 should be ACID 2 compliant, that argument starts to fail. Should IE be allowed to be bundled if it passes that test?
You're completely misconstruing what the ACID-2 test is. It is not a general compliance test for Web standards. It is an edge case test, meant to be used to see if a compliant browser correctly handles some weird cases and handles broken content according to the standard for how broken things are to be handled. One can easily create a browser which passes the ACID-2 test but which fails on a large percentage of common, standards compliant pages. It was not designed to "prove" you follow standards but to help browser developers test some parts of the standard that were often broken even on largely compliant browsers.
Even if IE 8 were to conform to standards in every way, that is no guarantee that MS won't intentionally break them again in IE 9 and does nothing to redress the damage they've done in the intervening decade.
Should IE be allowed to be bundled if it passes that test? If not, then why?
No. Because the Acid-2 test is not comprehensive compliance test. Also because compliance is not the only factor in which browsers are different. Imagine for a moment IE 5 had been completely compliant, and bundled. It still doesn't have tabs and is inferior in many ways (no tabs, no spellcheck, no ad blocker) to other, competing browsers, but it still would dominate that market. When an inferior product wins market share over a superior one, just because it is bundled with something monopolized, that market is broken. It isn't fair to consumers or other browser developers.
Forcing MS to comply with standards and forcing them to unbundle IE would be about the minimum it would take to level the playing field again.
Because a browser should be considered an after market add on?
Because there was an existing, healthy market for that product before MS introduced their bundled product. That's the law. MS knew it before they broke the law, but they gambled that they'd make more money breaking the law and paying the fines than they would complying... and so far they've been right. Breaking the law pays, because US politicians are easily and legally bribed via lobbying.
Please! Browsers are as integral to computing now as anything else is.
Which is why it is important to make sure the market is a healthy, capitalist free market that rewards innovation. How exactly would removing IE from Windows be unfair? People can still download it if they want. OEMs like Dell can still pre-install it if they want. All it does is level the playing field so that IE has to compete based upon how good it is, not upon the fact that Microsoft also makes Windows and can abuse that fact. Really, if IE is a good product, it will retain its market share. If it sucks, it will lose market share... just like every other product. This not only rewards other companies, but gives MS incentive to make IE better. How can you have a problem with that?
However, the majority of stories coming out of the EU regarding monopoly investigations pertains to MS.
MS is the most prodigious antitrust abuser since Bell. The EU is also investigating Apple for their iPod tie ins and dozens of other companies we've never heard of because we don't pay attention to those markets. Any competent economist will tell you the only way to fix MS's absurd amount of abuse is to break them up, but the EU has treated them with k
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That's what a package manager is for. No really. The only problem is, neither OS X, or Windows ships with a good package manager, and the common Linux ones generally are useless for commercial software and most things downloaded from the Web instead of from a repository.
I go weeks without ever logging out (just lock the screensaver). Also, don't you think it is an unnecessary security risk and resource drain for everyone to implement this individually? This should be part of the OS, along with install/uninstall, dependency management, and licensing/registration of applications. The fact that it is not is just more evidence of how slow progress in desktop OS development really is.
I don't think that is accurate. From the summary Groklaw posted long time ago, breaking encryption yourself is legal, but distributing tools to break it is banned. I could be wrong, but that is what I recall.
I think Apple hit it's mark, you're just not it's mark. That's okay I'm not either. I'm not concerned about size or weight all that much. I have a MacBook and if they had a model twice as thick and twice as heavy for $200 less, I'd have bought it. That doesn't mean the market for small and thin doesn't exist. I know those people and they're probably not who you think. A senior engineer/software architect I recently worked with did not get a Mac as his last laptop because he will only consider the extremely small form factor machines (like Sony's tiny one he has now). He doesn't care about looks either, but he is more of a manager now than an engineer. He wants something tiny that will fit in a briefcase, check e-mail, surf the web, run terminals and project management software and read files and create and show presentations and play mp3s. Price is not a big concern since the company will buy it for him. I'll bet you this machine will be his next purchase.
No problem. I suppose I shouldn't expect everyone knows how Time Machine works. It is actually nicer than it sounds because it saves the backup and each of the changes until it runs out of space, so if you change a file and want the old version back after the backup has synched, you can still access the previous versions, much like a versioning system. OS X 10.5 has both a nice interface to it, and an API so programs can access it through that program's interface (like undoing changes to photoshop files beyond the last time you saved and quit working on it).
Yeah, pretty much, then again you end up with two enclosures and the USB is another, potential bottleneck. Also, you can buy an external 7200 RPM .5 terabyte SATA drive for $120... barely if you buy the cheapest one from the cheapest place you know. Apple tends to have a bit higher quality parts (according to independent reliability testing from consumer reports).
Umm, I think you missed the point. We're talking about automated backups of changed files across wireless. Plugging this thing in, then clicking Time machine to "on" and selecting it is a lot easier than any other solution I've seen.
Umm, I disagree. MSOffice is already available for OS X (and many people feel that version better than the Windows version). If there are two things WINE on Linux runs well those are IE and MS Office.
The application lock-in on Windows is not MS Office. It is all the games, niche applications, IE, and all the applications users have already purchased which will be non-functional.
Actually, I don't believe this is true. According to the DMCA it is illegal to distribute tools used to break CSS, but I don't think actually breaking it is illegal. Also, that only applies in the US, and (finally) some of the new Blueray/HD-DVD discs are supposedly starting to ship with an mpeg file on them that iTunes can just grab and load onto your iPod (and I'll bet this new sub-notebook).
The summary missed one of the new products, called "time capsule." It is basically an 802.11n wireless hub/Gb ethernet hub, with a built in hard drive for use with Time Machine to auto-backup all your macs. It's going for $500 for a terabyte, or $300 for a half terabyte. It is, of course, a small form factor without room for more drives. It will probably be the only backup solution that will really be easy enough for most of the home market, but not really all that cool for Slashdot types.
That is a short-term solution because the OS part and the Office part and the browser part have monopoly influence on their respective markets, with the OS part having the most lock-in. I think breaking the company up is a good idea, but at least two of the new companies should have the rights to the OS, with new patents and code forking as they go forward. This would instantly restore competition to the market.
Imagine you're a buyer for Dell or Ford. Instead of deciding if you should buy WinXP or Vista from the OS part of MS, you could ask both of the two new companies to bid on the contract to supply your OS of choice, with the cheaper one getting your cash. Imagine that! ...MS having to compete for the lowest price.
I don't think your solution would work because it doesn't really address the core problem, MS's desktop OS monopoly and all the lock-in it has created. I think it would be more productive to break up MS, but to give at least two of the new companies complete rights to the copyrights, patents, and trademarks for their OS. Then we end up with two different Windows vendors competing against one another to make the best version. You can buy Windows A or Windows B based upon features and price and even take competing bids from them on large contracts. The OS monopoly is not just set back, but actually broken.
...the problem isn't including apps, it's using your OS monopoly to out-compete other app vendorsActually it's using your monopoly to not compete with other app vendors, but to win market share based upon artificial problems introduced to other vendor's apps using your monopoly.
Actually, that would still be illegal unless all competing products were included in this package as well.
Add to it a kinda robust package manager that can connect to the internet(which people would be forced to see at least once, so they will be likely to look to it), and now not only do they get around all the anti-trust bundling stuff, but they still get to leverage free(as in beer) products and services to their customers.MS probably would add a package manager, but again if it comes with MS's repository pre-configured, then it has to come with competing repositories pre-configured as well to be in compliance with the law.
Could even turn it into a revenue stream, by letting closed developers place products in it, for a fee of course.This isn't direct bundling, but it is still tying. If a competitor has to pay a fee to get their product easily downloadable, but MS gets to do so for free because they are the OS creators, then MS is still unfairly leveraging that position.
Similar systems have done a lot of make linux easier to use.Agreed, default package mangers would be a boon to both Windows and OS X.
Not that it will happen of course, but I think it could be made to their benefit and that of their customers--without being too evil or anti-competitive.Hopefully the courts will prevent them from implementing an anticompetitive version of this in the first place.
You're "wrong" because your post was predicated upon the assumption that "bundling" was illegal.
By comparison, Apple would seem (at least on the surface) to be more guilty of using their OS to gain market hold on many areas of software outside of the OS.See, you're still doing it. Sure Apple is using their OS to gain market share in other areas, but that doesn't undermine the free market and is not illegal, because Apple doesn't have a monopoly on desktop OS's. The word "guilty" implies a crime. Apple is not committing a crime by bundling things with their OS. Your error is in making that assumption and in so doing misunderstanding both the letter and intent of antitrust law.
Listen, you seem to be having trouble understanding me. I'll be really clear. Abusing a monopoly is illegal, regardless of if you do it via bundling or some other mechanism. Bundling is not illegal, unless it is being used as a way to undermine the market. Your posts both make it clear you've not really understood this so far. Here's an analogy that might help. Going into a house and taking a $20 bill of the kitchen table is not illegal in and of itself. Stealing is illegal. So if person A goes into a house and takes a twenty they own, they haven't broken the law. If Person B goes into someone else's house and take a twenty they don't own, they've broken the law and committed theft. It is the exact same action, taken under different circumstances. When half the people on a forum then write about how sure person B took a twenty, but person A did the exact same thing and hasn't been arrested, it is incredibly frustrating. I realize that antitrust law is not as well understood as stealing laws, but it isn't rocket science either. MS and Apple both follow the same laws and the laws have been applied fairly so far. Please understand that the criminal action is undermining a market by bundling a monopolized product and a non-monopolized product, not bundling two products that are not monopolized.
Nope, MS is most obviously and regularly breaking the law, so they are prosecuted for it more often.
Funny, I seem to remember saying just the same thing.No, I don't think you did in your comment above and didn't in my comment. Work on your reading comprehension.
Don't bother responding, you're obviously just another biased individual and you comments mean nothing to me.I'm sorry you can't understand my comments. Luckily stupidity is mostly environmental, so you can work on it.
Of course, let say instead of buying from OEM I buy Windows on a CD... I don't have a browser yet. How am I going to go and download one exactly?
Assuming you are such a user, you probably already have a different computer, since 99% of people cannot install an OS by themselves. Here are your options, use a different computer to get it, get a free CD with a browser on it (which everyone will start giving away), go to Best Buy and get a free CD there, use the CD provided by your ISP, use an FTP program to grab one, use a package manager to grab one from a repository (want to bet MS would not add such a package manager?), or use some other method I haven't thought of yet.
I fully understand your point, but its simply not viable.
Yes it is. You may think this will be a problem for users, but I'm sorry practically no one installs their own OS these days. If you do, you are part of a tiny fraction of a percent of people and I'll bet you have a computer already that you can use to load a browser from the internet, don't you?
Programming frameworks and server software not being bundled?
Programming frameworks are used by developers, which is a smaller, more savvy group yet. Server software is too vague of a term and we'll have to wait and see what they mean by it. MS was convicted of abusing their monopoly to gain share in the server OS market, which is probably what they were referring to. There isn't much point addressing your comments with regard to that since it was not defined and since i was speculation about what types of software the EU would investigate for possible problems.
If a default install for any OS doesn't include a media player, a browser, networking stacks, as many runtimes as possible, basic text editors, etc, its incomplete, seriously.
Nope. A computer system is an OS, a bunch of applications, drivers for hardware, and the hardware itself. That is what most users buy. If you like building your own systems on whiteboxes, great, but it will take you one extra step of keeping a CD full of your applications, which most people who install whiteboxes do anyway. Alternately, you can just install a package manager, or MS could install one themselves and make things easy on you.
The only thing i find important is that MS has to make darn sure that OEMs -can- bundle other stuff, and that the APIs are open, and I realise MS hasn't been perfect in this regard, far from it, and they need to improve there.
That is not sufficient to establish free market competition. OEMs must not only be able to add software and remove software, they must be forced to specifically choose which software they want to add to their bundle and they must make that choice without being influenced by MS's monopoly, based upon the individual merits of the software packages. That is a requirement for a capitalist market to function and generate the levels of innovation that occur naturally in markets without the influence of a monopoly.
If I type a web address in the explorer, Firefox will pop up if its my default browser.
Good for you, but you don't represent the rest of the market. Most users don't know that is even an option, or why they would want that to happen. Most users assume all markets are free, capitalist markets and so don't investigate if there is a better browser. They assume if there is abetter browser, Dell would have installed it, just as they assume if there were a cheaper, faster engine, Ford would have put it in their car. The problem is, the Web browser market among many others, is not a free, capitalist market. It is a market that has been illegally influenced by a monopolist in another market. So consumers suffer and the market as a whole stagnates. No one invests significant capital in the market, because competing against a monopoly costs a lot of money, has higher risks than other investments, and returns less
Actually it is very cut and dried. It is illegal to leverage a monopoly in one market to gain share in another existing market. That's really all you need to know.
There is, however, public interest in ensuring that what's bundled isn't preventing competition or damaging the value to the consumer in some other form.Lets see, MS has single handedly held back Web technologies by about a decade by bundling IE and refusing to even completely implement 8 year old standards. According to leaked memos they did this to intentionally keep the Web crippled so that Web applications cannot be used to bypass their OS monopoly breaking their lock-in via software availability. I'd say that's pretty damaging, wouldn't you?
Making Windows have a far worse out-of-the-box experience (e.g. removing key functionality such as web browsing) is not pro consumer."Out-of-box" experience is not really very important. MS's customers fall mostly into two categories: OEMs (like Dell and Sony) and enterprises (like the state of Ohio or Ford). Neither of these uses the systems as they are, but instead installs it along with a variety of other software using special deployment tools. The end user whether a Dell computer buyer or a worker at Ford gets a system that has all the features they need as determined by the person deploying it. The point of this antitrust action is to make sure those real customers (Dell or Ford) not only have the option of installing Firefox instead of IE or WinAmp instead of WMP, but they have to make that choice on a level playing field where only the merits of the software influences their decision. In this way, two things happen. First, the customers pick the "best" software for their users instead of using whatever MS pre-installed. Second, both MS and other developers know these people will pick what they think is the best and will compete to make their software better than the others, motivating innovation.
In a healthy market a software vendor can't let their Web browser stagnate for four years without adding any new features, during the height of the internet explosion. This action is about making sure MS and everyone else is motivated by cold hard cash to make the best products possible. Currently MS relies not on the merits of their software but on their ability to abuse their monopoly. Why would they spend the money to make their product the best when users will mostly use it anyway due to their bundling? You need to remove MS's ability to rely upon that bundling to get them to compete and make good products. That is what this is about.
I disagree.
The EU constantly picks on Microsoft because it's a company we love to hate and they have deep pockets.No they prosecute MS because MS constantly breaks the law and other companies complain to them, knowing the US courts have been paid off.
What about Apple? I mean, isn't SpotLight "bundled" as part of Leopard?Sure it is, but "bundling" isn't illegal in and of itself. Leveraging a monopoly in one market into another market is illegal and if you have a monopoly, bundling is one way to do it. Apple doesn't even compete in the desktop OS market, since they refuse to sell OS X to Dell or any other OEM. Apple does compete in the "desktop computer system" market against Dell and HP and Sony, but they certainly don't have a monopoly there, so there is no way such bundling can be illegal.
Why aren't they filing probes against an even bigger brother??That shows what you know. The EU does have an ongoing probe against Apple, not for their OS since it is not a monopoly, but with regards to their iPod line, which at 70% is close to being a monopoly on portable digital music players. If they decide Apple has enough influence, they will charge Apple for bundling the iTunes software with iPods and for tying it to the iTunes store.
The EU investigates lots of companies for antitrust abuse. If you her about MS being charged more often their are two reasons, one it is more likely to be reported in the news sites you read, and two, MS has built their entire business model on breaking antitrust law and hoping the fines are smaller than the money it makes them.
Please ignore most of the other replies to your post. They don't know what they're talking about and while you're wrong, it is not for the reasons they put forward.
Bundling software is no more illegal than shooting a gun (to use an analogy I've already used here today). What is illegal is leveraging a monopoly in one market to gain share in a separate, existing market. Bundling is one way to do that. To continue my analogy, it is illegal to kill and injure other people without provocation. Shooting people is one way to injure or kill them.
MS competes in the OS market against, well pretty much no one but a few Linux distros. They have overwhelming share of this market. Their customers are OEMs (like Dell, HP, and Sony) and large enterprises (like AT&T or UCLA) who are installing an OS on whiteboxes. Apple, refuses to sell their OS in this market (for very good economic reasons I won't explain here). If you were CEO of Dell, what OS would you buy to pre-install for your customers that would not result in you being fired within a month? Yup, just Windows, thus they have a monopoly and can control those OEMs and gouge them.
Apple sells their OS in a box, but only licensed to run on Apple computers, so really they're selling OS X upgrades. Mostly, they sell complete systems which compete with Dell and HP and Sony. You can buy a complete system from Apple or from Sony, thus they don't have anything approaching a monopoly in that market. Now this is not to say Apple does not have to follow the same laws. Apple, like MS, is forbidden from leveraging a monopoly in one market into another market. Apple has about 70% market share of portable music players, which is just about where governments tend to start investigating. Apple is currently being investigated and if they are found to have monopoly influence in that market, they'll be forbidden from bundling iTunes software or tying the iTunes store (via DRM and the iTunes software). Contrary to the opinions of others, the rules don't change and aren't being applied only to MS. You just have to know the rules are against leveraging monopolies, not bundling.
Now how does this affect you personally and your desires? Well, antitrust law doesn't stop OEMs, like Dell from bundling, since they don't have a monopoly to abuse. So if you want more bundled software tell OEMs that and go with the OEM that bundles the software you want. (Assuming there are not secret agreements with MS forcing OEMs not to install some of the software you want, which is likely one of the things that will be investigated by the EU) and hence may lead to you getting more bundled software, and more importantly, better quality bundled software since instead of IE and WMP, some OEMs will be able to install Firefox and WinAmp or even Opera and Banshee.
The end result of antitrust action is to make sure you get more choices, better choices, and lower prices. Wouldn't you like to buy a copy of Windows that does not come with IE and WMP and is reduced in price to reflect the cost MS pays to develop those programs, while still getting free software that does the same task? Wouldn't it be nice if companies had a financial incentive to invest in these markets again and produce premium software? Wouldn't it be nice if Microsoft actually devoted significant resources to making IE the best browser instead of letting it sit with no improvements for a decade? Wouldn't it be nice if when MS introduced anti-features designed to hurt their customers and profit MS, they lost market share as a result and thus were motivated to not do that anymore?
I hope this has cleared up some of your confusion.
I doubt it, at least financially. Monopolies allow you to make money without creating anything of benefit to customers.
Microsoft can no longer do anything without the specture of Anti-trust law looming.This just isn't true. MS has a lot of lawyers and the law is clear. They know when the way they introduce products is antitrust abuse and when it is not and they tend towards the former because they know it will make them more money. Nothing at all stops MS from creating new products, not tied to monopolized ones and competing fairly with them... it is just less profitable. MS isn't accidentally breaking antitrust law, they are a lot more informed than the average Slashdot reader. They do it willfully, betting the penalties will not be bigger than the profits, and they've been right every time so far.
I also think two or three Microsofts would more then[sic] likely suck all the oxygen out room just as much as the one monolith does; but at least we might see some real progress.Two or three Microsofts would compete with each other and we'd get better products as a result.
Over the last six to eight years we have gotten just about exactly nothing from Microsoft of real value.Why would they bother? It is easier and more profitable to leverage products into other markets, rather than create something good enough to compete fairly. DRM doesn't help MS's customers, but it does let them move into the media downloads market. Why work on user features when anti-features make more cash?
I'm not saying that MS was not guilty of antitrust violations. I am asking though what are the merits of the new accusation? Is it the same accusation, or is it different?
One of the charges is the same thing MS was convicted of in the US, but has not been charged with in the EU. Previously the EU convicted them of abuse in the server OS market and audio player software markets. They are now looking into web browsers (which they've been convicted of in the US) and other, unnamed markets.
Frankly, the market has change SIGNIFICANTLY, for better or worse, than it was in the mid 90's. Consumers expect browsers included in the OS.
Back in the day, consumers expected to have to rent a standardized, rotary phone from the phone company, not to be able to buy any phone from the store. It has nothing to do with what is legal or best for the market.
Yes, OEMs should be able to include other browsers with their systems.
Sorry, not good enough. OEMs need to consider MS's software on an even playing field with other software, with no incentive to include o not include it other than the merits of the software. The market needs to be a level playing field for everyone, or the law is being broken. OEMs should include or not include IE because they think their customers will prefer it based on its merits, not based upon artificial problems introduced into competitors (broken standards in use). If IE is included, OEMs may simply leave it and not bother making the choice and consumers will suffer and developers will still target IE because they know it will be included, while they don't know if a different browser will be. They have to bundle all of them or none of them or the market will still be broken.
it's hard to argue that with competitors doing well in the EU: adoption of FireFox ranges from 20 - 40% in some member countries
Yes, and a lot worse in other EU countries. So you consider say 30% market share, versus 60% market share when the one with 30% is faster, has dozens of features the other lacks, is more secure, and properly reads pages while IE does not, and has been that way for many years. I'd say when it takes MS six years to implement something as simple and widely acclaimed as tabbed browsing windows, that competitors are not doing well to have only 30% of the market (and that 30% is pretty generous).
If Opera were doing as well, I would imagine that they wouldn't complain.
You completely mistake Opera's market. Opera makes most of their money selling an embedded browser of phones and the like. They sell fewer browsers because they can't handle all the pages broken to work with IE and can prove that in court. They do fairly well in that space, but are still losing largely to embedded IE based upon artificial problems, not real problems with their browser.
If IE were really so abusive these days, would they have such viable competition?
All of their competition has to give away their browser just to enter the market since everyone is forced to pay for IE's development when they buy Windows. As it is, most of the big competitors were started by frustrated users as a way to get another option since no business felt entering the market against an abusive monopoly was worthwhile.
Can you tell me one good reason why MS should be able to force every windows machine to ship with IE, but the Firefox team and Opera can't force every Windows machine to ship with their products? MS does it simply because they have a monopoly and no one stops them from leveraging it. As a result, we all suffer. IE 7 still doesn't implement 8 year old standards every other browser has complied with basically forever. Moreover, there is evidence this is an intentional attempt to keep the Web itself crippled so that people can't bypass their desktop OS monopoly using web based apps. You don't see the Web itself being crippled and held bac
Well sort of. Actually the rules don't change. The rules just don't apply in most cases. The "rules" say that it is illegal to leverage a monopoly in one market to gain share in another market. Since most companies aren't monopolies, they don't have to worry about this law.
I mean come on, an OS without built in media player or browser?Something most people seem to be missing is the law applies to MS, not to OEMs like Dell or Gateway. They are free to bundle IE or Firefox or WinAmp or whatever they like, so this would not be a problem for most users.
IE sucking balls is the only freagin reason Firefox or Opera have been able to pick up...if it was NOT bundled, but it actually rocked (I know, its hard to imagine), Firefox and Opera would never have been able to gain any Windows market share...This is true, but it doesn't spell out a very important point. By forcing MS to compete on even ground with other offerings, you force MS to make IE better instead of relying on bundling. This is important so I'll repeat it. This provides direct, monetary incentive for both Microsoft and other software makers to invest in making better browsers, which is a big win for users, regardless of which browser they end up using.
All this garbage is pushing it. Its definately a GOOD thing to keep Microsoft in check, but push it too far and you start hurting the customers. For what? To help other companies, which is just moving the problem around: customers still lose.And this is why my previous point is so important. When the bundle is put together by the user or by an OEM, their incentive is to give the user the best software so that people will buy their bundle instead of a competitor's. Competition results in better products, otherwise; extreme socialism would have killed capitalism. Capitalism's major virtue is that it used greed and laziness and self-interest to motivate better products... which it does very well until a monopoly appears. That is why we have the law in the first place. When Bell telephone was broken up, what happened? All of a sudden prices dropped, new services became available, and people stopped renting a crappy rotary phone for a huge amount of money and started picking up cheap phones with answering machines and autodial and speaker modes. If MS is stopped from bundling, all those markets in which it has a bundled or tied solution (jukebox software, web browsers, programming frameworks, server software, video players) will innovate faster and have better, cheaper products. That is the whole point of enforcing these laws.
By offering them as free downloads and by convincing OEMs that your product is the best so they should install it for their users... you know the same as every other software vendor on the planet that doesn't have a monopoly to abuse.
That's because you don't understand the law or the reasons for it. Including applications with an OS is no more illegal than firing a rifle is illegal. It is just that in some cases (when you're abusing a monopoly) it breaks the market and thus we've passed a law making it illegal, just as firing a rifle into another person kills them, and we've passed a law making that illegal. It isn't including applications with an OS that is illegal, it is abusing a monopoly in one market to break free trade in another market that is illegal; just as it is not firing a gun into another person that is illegal, but murder and assault by any means that is illegal.
There are certain things that the average user expects to be able to do with a PC out of the box. Things like browsing the internet, playing a media file, etc.Probably 80% of computers come with an OS pre-installed and nothing stops the OEM from including any applications they like, including those made by Microsoft, so this doesn't affect those users. Probably 15% are bought by businesses who use automated install tools so this does not affect them. The only people this might inconvenience is people who buy whitebox PCs and install a boxed copy of Windows and who want to use one of those currently bundled applications. If those people aren't competent enough to get or make a copy of IE on CD to install, then they also probably aren't competent enough to install an OS in the first place.
It is kind of like telling auto manufacturers that they cannot include built in AC, CD player, or any other ameneties with their cars because it kills the third party market even though these are things that consumers expect to come with their cars.No it isn't. Like 99% of all analogies in this thread you have tried equate the behavior of a company that does not have a monopoly in any market bundling products, with a company that does have a monopoly bundling. They are not the same at all, which is why one is legal and one is illegal.
Try your analogy with something that is a monopoly, like your local power distribution company. Suppose they decided to go into the air conditioner market as well. Suppose they stopped selling the service of hooking up electricity to new houses and started selling a bundle which included power hookup and a "free" air conditioner, for only $8000 more than their old power hookup service. Further assume you're in the AC selling business. Does that sound fair to you? After all, some users can still install solar panels and buy an air conditioner from you. Other customers could throw away the air conditioner they got from the power company and buy one from you. If you were in the air conditioner sales and installation market, you wouldn't complain about that, would you?
So far as I know, only a few browsers are completely standards compliant.
No, I doubt any browser is, but have you ever done any Web development? If you create pages based upon the standards and then test 99% of the time it will work just fine in every browser except IE, where it never works. MS doesn't even try and the leaked internal e-mails show that this is intentional.
...with the announcement that IE 8 should be ACID 2 compliant, that argument starts to fail. Should IE be allowed to be bundled if it passes that test?
You're completely misconstruing what the ACID-2 test is. It is not a general compliance test for Web standards. It is an edge case test, meant to be used to see if a compliant browser correctly handles some weird cases and handles broken content according to the standard for how broken things are to be handled. One can easily create a browser which passes the ACID-2 test but which fails on a large percentage of common, standards compliant pages. It was not designed to "prove" you follow standards but to help browser developers test some parts of the standard that were often broken even on largely compliant browsers.
Even if IE 8 were to conform to standards in every way, that is no guarantee that MS won't intentionally break them again in IE 9 and does nothing to redress the damage they've done in the intervening decade.
Should IE be allowed to be bundled if it passes that test? If not, then why?
No. Because the Acid-2 test is not comprehensive compliance test. Also because compliance is not the only factor in which browsers are different. Imagine for a moment IE 5 had been completely compliant, and bundled. It still doesn't have tabs and is inferior in many ways (no tabs, no spellcheck, no ad blocker) to other, competing browsers, but it still would dominate that market. When an inferior product wins market share over a superior one, just because it is bundled with something monopolized, that market is broken. It isn't fair to consumers or other browser developers.
Forcing MS to comply with standards and forcing them to unbundle IE would be about the minimum it would take to level the playing field again.
Because a browser should be considered an after market add on?
Because there was an existing, healthy market for that product before MS introduced their bundled product. That's the law. MS knew it before they broke the law, but they gambled that they'd make more money breaking the law and paying the fines than they would complying... and so far they've been right. Breaking the law pays, because US politicians are easily and legally bribed via lobbying.
Please! Browsers are as integral to computing now as anything else is.
Which is why it is important to make sure the market is a healthy, capitalist free market that rewards innovation. How exactly would removing IE from Windows be unfair? People can still download it if they want. OEMs like Dell can still pre-install it if they want. All it does is level the playing field so that IE has to compete based upon how good it is, not upon the fact that Microsoft also makes Windows and can abuse that fact. Really, if IE is a good product, it will retain its market share. If it sucks, it will lose market share... just like every other product. This not only rewards other companies, but gives MS incentive to make IE better. How can you have a problem with that?
However, the majority of stories coming out of the EU regarding monopoly investigations pertains to MS.
MS is the most prodigious antitrust abuser since Bell. The EU is also investigating Apple for their iPod tie ins and dozens of other companies we've never heard of because we don't pay attention to those markets. Any competent economist will tell you the only way to fix MS's absurd amount of abuse is to break them up, but the EU has treated them with k