MS's market share for desktop OS's is about 98%. Apple's share of the portable, digital music player market is about 70% if you...
How can that be when Linux market share is roughly 5% and Apples is roughly 13%?
You're confusing market share and install base. Market share is relevant for both antitrust law and for the economics of undermining free trade. The average desktop OS buyer is a company like Dell who buys it as a component to pre-install on their desktop computer systems. The number of companies using Linux in this role (as opposed to individuals who install it later after a copy of some other OS was already purchased) is quite small. Most estimates place it in the 1-2% range. The overall Linux share is higher, but mostly on servers and appliances, which is not considered the same market. Apple does not sell OS X into the desktop OS market, instead bundling it with their Mac computers and bypassing the desktop OS market entirely (except hackintoshes) so it does not even figure into the relevant market.
Short answer to the question is, yes, Apple is becoming the Microsoft of the mobile world.
MS's market share for desktop OS's is about 98%. Apple's share of the portable, digital music player market is about 70% if you don't include phones that play music, in which case their market share is fairly negligible. Not counting phones I know people who own Toshiba, Sansa, and Creative brand players.
The EU recently looked into the iPod with an eye towards antitrust abuse. They seem t have concluded that within the EU at least, consumers consider media playing cell phones as alternatives to the iPod when making purchasing decisions. As such, Apple does not have dominance in the market and is not undermining free trade. In the US the situation is different, in that cell phone contracts make competition less elastic, but with Apple's move into the cell phone market, it is clear the two are largely converging. Basically, Apple might, barely have too much control in the portable player market to be legal, but every day that goes away as cell phones become the norm for playing music on the go.
A number of non-magnetic direction-finding devices can also be called a compass...
True.
...and one of those happens to be a GPS (with a bit of software).
Well, a GPS device moving at a sufficient speed, with the right software, which is aligned by the user in the direction of travel, could qualify as a compass. The problem is the iPhone often does not meet these criteria. The iPhone is often not moving or not moving quickly enough to make up for the inaccuracy of the GPS system. Further, it is not always aligned with the direction of travel.
It has been rumored for some time, this deficiency will be solved by adding a magnetometer chip, specifically Asahi Kasei's azimuth sensor No. AK8973.
The compass is mostly useless, for those of us that can orient a map (but not everyone was a Boy Scout). Apple doesn't ever have a single-feature addition, as if a compass screen was all you got.
The rumor is about a hardware compass being added, not a compass application. I assume the functionality would be integrated into the maps and available for other applications.
If you have a GPS, then you also have a compass, because any GPS can compute North.
This is untrue. A GPS can tell you what your coordinates are but not which way your device is facing relative to north. If you're moving it assumes the GPS is facing the direction of travel, which is not always the case. When you aren't moving it gets quickly confused.
Hence, because he thought the iPhone had a GPS, he didn't understand why they were "adding" a compass.
The iPhone does have GPS. They're rumored to be adding an internal compass so the iPhone will also know what direction it is facing and can use that to accurately point out objects and give better directions. Most commercial GPS units include a compass as well these days.
We all know what the difference is between a GPS and a compass.
Apparently some of us are confused about the relative capabilities though.
... it will be less than capable of the respective Nokia N-device but as always the Apple marketing and fanboyz
There have always been products competing with both the iPod and iPhone that have a longer and more impressive bullet list of features. The problem being, the average person doesn't enjoy using them and half those features are so poorly implemented they are just painful to use. Many geeks are happy to work around poorly designed interfaces for the sake of overall functionality.
Is Apple becoming the Microsoft of the mobile world?!
The problem with Microsoft is that they use a very large market share in one market to destroy competition and innovation in other markets, thus slowing progress. Apple doesn't have dominance in any markets, so their locked down products drive innovation by providing real competition. When Apple has a monopoly o near monopoly and ties to other markets, then "ll lump them in with Microsoft.
I don't know... but I'm telling you something guys: this is 2009 and we have Symbian & Android which together reach some 60% of the mobile smartphone market...
Yup, that's very cool and I have high hopes for Android, which have not really panned out yet. I still wonder if Android would exist or if it would have the level of functionality it does if Apple were not providing such strong competition.
So let's not pull are eyes out with our own hands and choose iPhone NOT.
For many people the iPhone is still the best offering. Since we're not dealing with a significantly broken market for smartphones, people should pick what works best for them, be it iPhone or an Android or some other phone. This drives developers to work hard and try to make better products. I don't see the point of picking a product that is not as well suited to my tasks based upon the underlying OS. All that does is provide incentive for developers of that OS to not work harder to meet my needs and not compete as strongly. (Note: I don't own any kind of smartphone, iPhone or other.)
A GPS and a compass are two different things, with slightly different and complimentary features. A GPS tells you where you are. A compass tells you which direction is north. Together they can tell you to turn around and go the other way even if you're not moving. Together they can tell you the building in front of you is the library and the one to your left is the brothel.
An encrypted config file can be considered to be quite similar to DRM. It won't work. If FF can read it somehow, then anyone else can read it by looking at how FF does it. It's even easier because FF is open source.
Yes, very similar to DRM. Are you familiar with the DMCA?
With that said, an open, unencrypted system that allows updates to be automatically added, but gives you a list of which ones were added since you last started FF would be very similar, without making companies try to work around it.
The problem being, if it is unencrypted, MS can manually edit wherever the list of already approved files is stored, unless it is in the cloud or something, and even then it may be possible.
And what prevents the updater from marking it as "approved"?
My implication was that the file where it is "approved" was encrypted, requiring Microsoft to reverse engineer how Firefox unencrypts the file in order to change it instead of just corrupting it and requiring all the extensions to be manually approved.
. But strategically, the mindset has to be "run as root and a process can do whatever it wants, for good or for bad".
Except root can't do things unless it understands how and even then it is not necessarily legal.
Bottom line, is this is not Firefox's fault. I think they are handling things properly in this case.
That's not really the topic of this thread. One could make arguments either way depending upon one's priorities.
Hi. If you are running automatic updates, then by default, you have a process running on your computer with administrative privileges. So, you are proposing that Firefox somehow magically blocks that?
You make this sound impossible, but that's not the case. Firefox doesn't have to automatically load any plug-in in the right folder. It can keep a list of which ones the user has manually approved and only use those. It can keep that list in an encrypted config file if it has to to keep MS from manually editing it. That's not to say Mozilla should adopt this behavior, only that MS having an admin process does not mean they can realistically control the workings of software running.
Hosting... Every email/every conversation will need to be stored on some central server, complete with any images and change history. Switching to a central location seems like a step backwards from the distributed system we have already with email.
I don't see the difference. Right now we use e-mail servers to centrally manage e-mail and they interact with other e-mail servers. Wave works the same way. Jabber works the same way. Wave just consolidates the two and adds some more features in.
Bandwidth. Every change, send character by character to whoever happens to have it open. That's a lot of 'real-time' bandwidth for this central location.
It's not so different from chat servers today. With the move towards video and audio chat, this will be the least of the real time bandwidth issue.
Especially with the concept of wave enabled blogs. If you blog hits DIGG, then the wave server will be sending out your edits to thousands of people simultaneously.
For most blogs this is more like sending it to your grandmother immediately. There are a few really popular blogs, but that's a niche issue.
I just wonder about the scalability of the hosting solution.
It's not so different from e-mail. The protocols are open and there is an OSS reference so the market should take care of the problem if it arises.
They did say that organizations can start their own WAVE server. Sounds like it works much the same way the Jabber (XMPP?) protocol works.
I believe it actually uses an extended version of XMPP.
This is bad. Let;s[sic] extend the same principle to everything then.
Umm, the laws already do apply the same principal to everything. You just haven't bothered to learn what said principal is.
How about forcing car manufacturers to include an option to put a competitor's engine in the car.
Yeah that makes sense if you think this is about bundling in general instead of undermining free markets using a monopoly.
In my opinion it makes not sense.
So your assumption is that the laws we've been applying for hundreds of years and which stopped some of the most awful abuses in history and have stimulated rapid innovation are incorrect.
Or maybe, just maybe, you're simply not understanding what they say and why they exist. Why don't you find out what antitrust laws are, and why they exist, then come back with an informed opinion?
And so you are killing ONE monopoly(IE) and strengthening another (Google).
Lets assume for the sake of argument that Google has sufficient influence in the online search market to constitute a monopoly. The same antitrust laws apply to them and to Microsoft who has been ruled to have a monopoly in the desktop OS market (not the Web browser market). Neither company can leverage their monopoly influence into a separate, preexisting market. Microsoft is leveraging their monopoly to promote their Web browser via the classic method of bundling, the most common form of illegal tying. Google is not leveraging their influence illegally in any way I know of but, if every time you used Google's search service it installed Chrome as a bundle, the courts would intervene as well.
Does that make any sense?
Not really since you failed to understand what the monopoly in question or the illegal and objectionable act being regulated is.
Breaking antitrust law, huh? Can you show me the specific law which prevents anything MS did?
It's article 82 of the EU competition laws. You can't leverage overwhelming market share in one market to influence another... but you should know that already because I've already explained it to you numerous times. You just refuse to listen to facts that might cause problems for your preconceived opinions.
Even the makers of Firefox do not want Firefox bundled with Windows.
According to on developer whose position was repudiated by a Mozilla higher up.
IE's market share is declining and Firefox's is rising due to natural market forces now that Microsoft has been called on their forcing OEMs to not bundle other browsers.
Sure, IE is losing share, but not nearly at the rate o in the numbers that would happen in a free market.
Your proposed 'solution' would harm vendors...
Are you trolling now drinkypoo? I didn't propose a solution.
Yeah, by eliminating the hassle of installing a browser.
Yeah, just like AT&T eliminated the hassle of you having to buy a telephone to go with your land line.
It's not like they make it difficult for the consumer to download a new browser. There is nothing in Vista's code that says "If simpleton installs thisandthis.exe, break his legs".
Which has jack and shit to do with antitrust laws. How can you argue against them being enforced when you don't even know what their purpose is?
If Microsoft has a monopoly, why are they spending so much money to compete against Apple?
In what market?
Apple doesn't compete against Apple in the desktop OS market because Apple doesn't sell/license ther OS to OEMs and and site licenses. Apple does compete with MS in other markets where MS does not have monopoly influence.
The fact is that operating system is not complete without a browser
So what? A motherboard isn't complete without RAM. It won't even function (unlike an OS and browser). Do you think it should be legal fo a company who has dominated the motherboard market to force buyers to buy their RAM as well? o you even understand the laws you're complaining about?
If you don't like it, and you clearly don't, fix it yourself when you get your PC home...
This is about free trade in markets, not inconveniencing me. Do you not even understand the purpose of antitrust laws?
Please educate yourself before expressing your uniformed opinions.
Ok, let's put one thing straight: Microsoft has the full right to do what it wants with Windows.
Microsoft has no inherent rights. It's a corporation, a legal construct. Without laws, it does not exist. MS cannot break the laws and your assertion that they have some sort of "right" to ignore antitrust law is idiotic.
Yes, and Microsoft does not have a monopoly on operating systems.
They do have a monopoly in legal terms and sufficient influence in the market to undermine free trade. Your assertion is junk. The distinction between the two companies and markets is perfectly valid.
This whole "browser war" nonsense has gone on long enough. Back when a browser was a novelty, perhaps even sold on the shelf at the store, maybe it made sense to worry about competition. However, now that the browser is essential to everyday computing and part of the platform, the demands being made entirely idiotic.
So your argument is that browsers are now more important, so competition and the advantages t brings via the free market are less important? Umm. That's a very umm, creative opinion.
It should not matter if people are given IE8 out of the gate or not.
And it shouldn't matter if you have to pay AT&T to rent on old rotary dial phone, you can always buy a better one and use it. That is if you ignore everything we know about markets, innovation and antitrust abuse and its affects.
However, forcing vendors to include other browsers is only slightly widening the selective controlled distribution and does not address any of the problems IE's dominance has caused in the first place.
Actually it does. If Web developers know a particular standards compliant browser will be installed on every computer, they are more likely to implement new, standards compliant technologies since they can be confident all users will be able to use sites that rely upon them.
...a browser is part of a platform as a steering wheel is part of a car.
Your analogy fails. No one has a monopoly on cars and steering wheels don't constitute a pre-existing, separate market.
Instead, the solution is to enforce IE's support of recognized standards.
This is one, potential remedy, but it is only a partial solution. It is, in fact, what Opera asked for as a remedy.
Frankly if you look at all platforms, not just personal computer platforms, you will see that they all include their own browser choice, whether it be a Linux based OS that includes firefox, or a smartphone that includes a webkit based browser like Nokia's S60 platform.
Yes, they do. If you look at computers in general, you'll notice they all include RAM. You'll also notice the RAM doesn't come bundled with the graphics chipset and people selling computers aren't forced to buy the two components from the same vendor because one company developed a monopoly on graphic chipsets and forced everyone to buy RAM with it. Instead computer makers buy the best RAM and the best graphic chipset and combine them. The point is to make sure because OEMs are forced to buy and ship the Windows OS because it has monopolized the market, they aren't given incentive to chose anything other than the best Web browser to include as well.
So targeting microsoft just because this mattered 10 years ago is pretty ridiculous...
It matters today. Without competition in the Web browser market, it stagnates and technologies don't advance rapidly. We've had a decade of crippled Web technologies and Web developers being forced to find ever more clever ways to hack around the limitations and make really old and incomplete technologies work. The easiest way to fix the problem and keep it fixed is to restore the free market and let it do the work.
Sorry EU, but how about we start requiring that all cars imported from the EU to the USA have the option of being fitted with American V8s....
That might make sense if EU automotive companies were breaking US law and needed to be punished for it in a way that would encourage them to stop breaking the law and remedy the damage done.
Microsoft wasn't doing anything wrong bundling IE in the 90's and they're not doing anything wrong now.
Yeah, except for breaking antitrust law and undermining the operation of the free market in a way that almost certainly is responsible for the fact that Web technologies have almost completely stopped advancing for the last decade.
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MS's market share for desktop OS's is about 98%. Apple's share of the portable, digital music player market is about 70% if you ...
How can that be when Linux market share is roughly 5% and Apples is roughly 13%?
You're confusing market share and install base. Market share is relevant for both antitrust law and for the economics of undermining free trade. The average desktop OS buyer is a company like Dell who buys it as a component to pre-install on their desktop computer systems. The number of companies using Linux in this role (as opposed to individuals who install it later after a copy of some other OS was already purchased) is quite small. Most estimates place it in the 1-2% range. The overall Linux share is higher, but mostly on servers and appliances, which is not considered the same market. Apple does not sell OS X into the desktop OS market, instead bundling it with their Mac computers and bypassing the desktop OS market entirely (except hackintoshes) so it does not even figure into the relevant market.
Short answer to the question is, yes, Apple is becoming the Microsoft of the mobile world.
MS's market share for desktop OS's is about 98%. Apple's share of the portable, digital music player market is about 70% if you don't include phones that play music, in which case their market share is fairly negligible. Not counting phones I know people who own Toshiba, Sansa, and Creative brand players.
The EU recently looked into the iPod with an eye towards antitrust abuse. They seem t have concluded that within the EU at least, consumers consider media playing cell phones as alternatives to the iPod when making purchasing decisions. As such, Apple does not have dominance in the market and is not undermining free trade. In the US the situation is different, in that cell phone contracts make competition less elastic, but with Apple's move into the cell phone market, it is clear the two are largely converging. Basically, Apple might, barely have too much control in the portable player market to be legal, but every day that goes away as cell phones become the norm for playing music on the go.
A number of non-magnetic direction-finding devices can also be called a compass...
True.
...and one of those happens to be a GPS (with a bit of software).
Well, a GPS device moving at a sufficient speed, with the right software, which is aligned by the user in the direction of travel, could qualify as a compass. The problem is the iPhone often does not meet these criteria. The iPhone is often not moving or not moving quickly enough to make up for the inaccuracy of the GPS system. Further, it is not always aligned with the direction of travel.
It has been rumored for some time, this deficiency will be solved by adding a magnetometer chip, specifically Asahi Kasei's azimuth sensor No. AK8973.
The compass is mostly useless, for those of us that can orient a map (but not everyone was a Boy Scout). Apple doesn't ever have a single-feature addition, as if a compass screen was all you got.
The rumor is about a hardware compass being added, not a compass application. I assume the functionality would be integrated into the maps and available for other applications.
If you have a GPS, then you also have a compass, because any GPS can compute North.
This is untrue. A GPS can tell you what your coordinates are but not which way your device is facing relative to north. If you're moving it assumes the GPS is facing the direction of travel, which is not always the case. When you aren't moving it gets quickly confused.
Hence, because he thought the iPhone had a GPS, he didn't understand why they were "adding" a compass.
The iPhone does have GPS. They're rumored to be adding an internal compass so the iPhone will also know what direction it is facing and can use that to accurately point out objects and give better directions. Most commercial GPS units include a compass as well these days.
We all know what the difference is between a GPS and a compass.
Apparently some of us are confused about the relative capabilities though.
... it will be less than capable of the respective Nokia N-device but as always the Apple marketing and fanboyz
There have always been products competing with both the iPod and iPhone that have a longer and more impressive bullet list of features. The problem being, the average person doesn't enjoy using them and half those features are so poorly implemented they are just painful to use. Many geeks are happy to work around poorly designed interfaces for the sake of overall functionality.
Is Apple becoming the Microsoft of the mobile world?!
The problem with Microsoft is that they use a very large market share in one market to destroy competition and innovation in other markets, thus slowing progress. Apple doesn't have dominance in any markets, so their locked down products drive innovation by providing real competition. When Apple has a monopoly o near monopoly and ties to other markets, then "ll lump them in with Microsoft.
I don't know... but I'm telling you something guys: this is 2009 and we have Symbian & Android which together reach some 60% of the mobile smartphone market...
Yup, that's very cool and I have high hopes for Android, which have not really panned out yet. I still wonder if Android would exist or if it would have the level of functionality it does if Apple were not providing such strong competition.
So let's not pull are eyes out with our own hands and choose iPhone NOT.
For many people the iPhone is still the best offering. Since we're not dealing with a significantly broken market for smartphones, people should pick what works best for them, be it iPhone or an Android or some other phone. This drives developers to work hard and try to make better products. I don't see the point of picking a product that is not as well suited to my tasks based upon the underlying OS. All that does is provide incentive for developers of that OS to not work harder to meet my needs and not compete as strongly. (Note: I don't own any kind of smartphone, iPhone or other.)
...it had a GPS (thus making a compas possible).
A GPS and a compass are two different things, with slightly different and complimentary features. A GPS tells you where you are. A compass tells you which direction is north. Together they can tell you to turn around and go the other way even if you're not moving. Together they can tell you the building in front of you is the library and the one to your left is the brothel.
An encrypted config file can be considered to be quite similar to DRM. It won't work. If FF can read it somehow, then anyone else can read it by looking at how FF does it. It's even easier because FF is open source.
Yes, very similar to DRM. Are you familiar with the DMCA?
With that said, an open, unencrypted system that allows updates to be automatically added, but gives you a list of which ones were added since you last started FF would be very similar, without making companies try to work around it.
The problem being, if it is unencrypted, MS can manually edit wherever the list of already approved files is stored, unless it is in the cloud or something, and even then it may be possible.
And what prevents the updater from marking it as "approved"?
My implication was that the file where it is "approved" was encrypted, requiring Microsoft to reverse engineer how Firefox unencrypts the file in order to change it instead of just corrupting it and requiring all the extensions to be manually approved.
. But strategically, the mindset has to be "run as root and a process can do whatever it wants, for good or for bad".
Except root can't do things unless it understands how and even then it is not necessarily legal.
Bottom line, is this is not Firefox's fault. I think they are handling things properly in this case.
That's not really the topic of this thread. One could make arguments either way depending upon one's priorities.
Hi. If you are running automatic updates, then by default, you have a process running on your computer with administrative privileges. So, you are proposing that Firefox somehow magically blocks that?
You make this sound impossible, but that's not the case. Firefox doesn't have to automatically load any plug-in in the right folder. It can keep a list of which ones the user has manually approved and only use those. It can keep that list in an encrypted config file if it has to to keep MS from manually editing it. That's not to say Mozilla should adopt this behavior, only that MS having an admin process does not mean they can realistically control the workings of software running.
Hosting... Every email/every conversation will need to be stored on some central server, complete with any images and change history. Switching to a central location seems like a step backwards from the distributed system we have already with email.
I don't see the difference. Right now we use e-mail servers to centrally manage e-mail and they interact with other e-mail servers. Wave works the same way. Jabber works the same way. Wave just consolidates the two and adds some more features in.
Bandwidth. Every change, send character by character to whoever happens to have it open. That's a lot of 'real-time' bandwidth for this central location.
It's not so different from chat servers today. With the move towards video and audio chat, this will be the least of the real time bandwidth issue.
Especially with the concept of wave enabled blogs. If you blog hits DIGG, then the wave server will be sending out your edits to thousands of people simultaneously.
For most blogs this is more like sending it to your grandmother immediately. There are a few really popular blogs, but that's a niche issue.
I just wonder about the scalability of the hosting solution.
It's not so different from e-mail. The protocols are open and there is an OSS reference so the market should take care of the problem if it arises.
They did say that organizations can start their own WAVE server. Sounds like it works much the same way the Jabber (XMPP?) protocol works.
I believe it actually uses an extended version of XMPP.
This is bad. Let;s[sic] extend the same principle to everything then.
Umm, the laws already do apply the same principal to everything. You just haven't bothered to learn what said principal is.
How about forcing car manufacturers to include an option to put a competitor's engine in the car.
Yeah that makes sense if you think this is about bundling in general instead of undermining free markets using a monopoly.
In my opinion it makes not sense.
So your assumption is that the laws we've been applying for hundreds of years and which stopped some of the most awful abuses in history and have stimulated rapid innovation are incorrect.
Or maybe, just maybe, you're simply not understanding what they say and why they exist. Why don't you find out what antitrust laws are, and why they exist, then come back with an informed opinion?
The anti-competitive behavior is not the bundling of IE itself...
It's sad when a comment which is probably an honest one, but which is 100% incorrect, is modded +5 Informative.
And so you are killing ONE monopoly(IE) and strengthening another (Google).
Lets assume for the sake of argument that Google has sufficient influence in the online search market to constitute a monopoly. The same antitrust laws apply to them and to Microsoft who has been ruled to have a monopoly in the desktop OS market (not the Web browser market). Neither company can leverage their monopoly influence into a separate, preexisting market. Microsoft is leveraging their monopoly to promote their Web browser via the classic method of bundling, the most common form of illegal tying. Google is not leveraging their influence illegally in any way I know of but, if every time you used Google's search service it installed Chrome as a bundle, the courts would intervene as well.
Does that make any sense?
Not really since you failed to understand what the monopoly in question or the illegal and objectionable act being regulated is.
Breaking antitrust law, huh? Can you show me the specific law which prevents anything MS did?
It's article 82 of the EU competition laws. You can't leverage overwhelming market share in one market to influence another... but you should know that already because I've already explained it to you numerous times. You just refuse to listen to facts that might cause problems for your preconceived opinions.
Even the makers of Firefox do not want Firefox bundled with Windows.
According to on developer whose position was repudiated by a Mozilla higher up.
IE's market share is declining and Firefox's is rising due to natural market forces now that Microsoft has been called on their forcing OEMs to not bundle other browsers.
Sure, IE is losing share, but not nearly at the rate o in the numbers that would happen in a free market.
Your proposed 'solution' would harm vendors...
Are you trolling now drinkypoo? I didn't propose a solution.
Yeah, by eliminating the hassle of installing a browser.
Yeah, just like AT&T eliminated the hassle of you having to buy a telephone to go with your land line.
It's not like they make it difficult for the consumer to download a new browser. There is nothing in Vista's code that says "If simpleton installs thisandthis.exe, break his legs".
Which has jack and shit to do with antitrust laws. How can you argue against them being enforced when you don't even know what their purpose is?
If Microsoft has a monopoly, why are they spending so much money to compete against Apple?
In what market?
Apple doesn't compete against Apple in the desktop OS market because Apple doesn't sell/license ther OS to OEMs and and site licenses. Apple does compete with MS in other markets where MS does not have monopoly influence.
The fact is that operating system is not complete without a browser
So what? A motherboard isn't complete without RAM. It won't even function (unlike an OS and browser). Do you think it should be legal fo a company who has dominated the motherboard market to force buyers to buy their RAM as well? o you even understand the laws you're complaining about?
If you don't like it, and you clearly don't, fix it yourself when you get your PC home...
This is about free trade in markets, not inconveniencing me. Do you not even understand the purpose of antitrust laws?
Please educate yourself before expressing your uniformed opinions.
PDF woefully lacks proper indexing, searching, etc. and the file tends to bloat up pretty crazily.
You're doing it wrong. Just because you work with idiots doesn't mean competent people can't use PDF just fine.
Ok, let's put one thing straight: Microsoft has the full right to do what it wants with Windows.
Microsoft has no inherent rights. It's a corporation, a legal construct. Without laws, it does not exist. MS cannot break the laws and your assertion that they have some sort of "right" to ignore antitrust law is idiotic.
Why is this Microsoft's problem and not that of the OEMs selling the computers ?
Why is it Randy Kraft's problem that he's not allowed out of a small cell? Because he was convicted of a crime and is being punished.
Yes, and Microsoft does not have a monopoly on operating systems.
They do have a monopoly in legal terms and sufficient influence in the market to undermine free trade. Your assertion is junk. The distinction between the two companies and markets is perfectly valid.
This whole "browser war" nonsense has gone on long enough. Back when a browser was a novelty, perhaps even sold on the shelf at the store, maybe it made sense to worry about competition. However, now that the browser is essential to everyday computing and part of the platform, the demands being made entirely idiotic.
So your argument is that browsers are now more important, so competition and the advantages t brings via the free market are less important? Umm. That's a very umm, creative opinion.
It should not matter if people are given IE8 out of the gate or not.
And it shouldn't matter if you have to pay AT&T to rent on old rotary dial phone, you can always buy a better one and use it. That is if you ignore everything we know about markets, innovation and antitrust abuse and its affects.
However, forcing vendors to include other browsers is only slightly widening the selective controlled distribution and does not address any of the problems IE's dominance has caused in the first place.
Actually it does. If Web developers know a particular standards compliant browser will be installed on every computer, they are more likely to implement new, standards compliant technologies since they can be confident all users will be able to use sites that rely upon them.
...a browser is part of a platform as a steering wheel is part of a car.
Your analogy fails. No one has a monopoly on cars and steering wheels don't constitute a pre-existing, separate market.
Instead, the solution is to enforce IE's support of recognized standards.
This is one, potential remedy, but it is only a partial solution. It is, in fact, what Opera asked for as a remedy.
Frankly if you look at all platforms, not just personal computer platforms, you will see that they all include their own browser choice, whether it be a Linux based OS that includes firefox, or a smartphone that includes a webkit based browser like Nokia's S60 platform.
Yes, they do. If you look at computers in general, you'll notice they all include RAM. You'll also notice the RAM doesn't come bundled with the graphics chipset and people selling computers aren't forced to buy the two components from the same vendor because one company developed a monopoly on graphic chipsets and forced everyone to buy RAM with it. Instead computer makers buy the best RAM and the best graphic chipset and combine them. The point is to make sure because OEMs are forced to buy and ship the Windows OS because it has monopolized the market, they aren't given incentive to chose anything other than the best Web browser to include as well.
So targeting microsoft just because this mattered 10 years ago is pretty ridiculous...
It matters today. Without competition in the Web browser market, it stagnates and technologies don't advance rapidly. We've had a decade of crippled Web technologies and Web developers being forced to find ever more clever ways to hack around the limitations and make really old and incomplete technologies work. The easiest way to fix the problem and keep it fixed is to restore the free market and let it do the work.
Sorry EU, but how about we start requiring that all cars imported from the EU to the USA have the option of being fitted with American V8s....
That might make sense if EU automotive companies were breaking US law and needed to be punished for it in a way that would encourage them to stop breaking the law and remedy the damage done.
Microsoft wasn't doing anything wrong bundling IE in the 90's and they're not doing anything wrong now.
Yeah, except for breaking antitrust law and undermining the operation of the free market in a way that almost certainly is responsible for the fact that Web technologies have almost completely stopped advancing for the last decade.