The Ninja Space Goat wrote:<-- won't stop the bashing. Microsoft is a monopoly and with every decision they make it seems, they further alienate their advanced users and the developers who make the very software that keeps people buying their products. I hate monopolies and I hate companies who abuse their monopolies. I have no envy for Bill Gates. I'd rather be poor and keep my soul.
Just to be fair, I hate AT&T, Cingular (which is owned by AT&T) and SBC (Which is also owned by AT&T now). That is another monopoly I'd love to burn down.
Agreed.
I'm totally fine with people spending their money on products from Microsoft and I'm totally fine if they think Vista is really cool. If that makes them happy, fine.
However, the monopoly Ninja points to makes the market unhealthy. Microsoft can force very bad stuff on us (the "developers"), producers of other hard- and software and on the end users. In practice people do
not have a choice. The only choice they have is windows 2000, XP or Vista.
At this moment, most people don't even realize there are other systems. I saw a TV show about vista and the stuff they showed were: fancy moving of windows (wow!), more security (about time), sidebar widgets with weather info etc (mmm.. were have I seen that before ...), tabbed browsing (you guys have to see that, it's so cool), transparent windows (so you can see the reason your machine is running so slow: the other programs running), etc etc
It would be so much better if the market share would be distributed a bit better, like 70/15/15%. It wouldn't have to be 3x30 or 4x25%. If Microsoft stays the biggest fine, if Apple stays around 3-5%, fine. As long as there is a healthier choice and one single producer cannot force everybody to follow their proprietary standards.
I mean, it's not only Microsoft. What Apple is trying to do with iTunes/iPod isn't very good either.
It's only recently that some governments start realizing they have gone along too long. And that they should start using more open formats for their documents, for example. In Belgium, the government is not allowed to distribute info in only Microsoft format anymore. Or they even use only open formats. Think about it: as it is now, as a civilian, you are forced by your own government to buy software from a certain company to be able to access the data you have right to. Or to be able to do stuff, like fill in your taxes, or search for info on a website, etc