Maybe if you have a mac or the full version. The freebie version sucks.
Instead of blaming MS for everything that is evil in the computing world (they do deserve some of the blame), I think the computer makers have a lot to answer for.
To continue with the car analogy, I don’t think consumers, nor authorities, would accdepts that seat belts are optional and costs extra for a new car. OR that you only get two disc brakes for the front wheels, but that brakes for rear wheels costs extra.
But computer makers get away with blaming MS for the securityholes in IE and OE. How about they start putting in a hardware firewall in all new computers. That would be a start. And I think we, as consumers, should start rewarding computer makers that can deliver safe computers for internet use. If they can preinstall windows, they sure can preinstall other safety features.
I have a d-link router, which only serves as fireweall, since I only have one computer. It was cheaper thanbuying a firewall and the computer fveels really safe. At about $50 it wasn’t that much to have a secure computer.
I do believe that this should be remedied, but I don’t believe it’s up to Microsoft. If MS wants to bundle its apps with Windows, that’s their perogotive. Forcing a company to bundle a competitor’s software would be ridiculous and anti-competitve in the other direction. It should be up to the OEM to decide what other apps to install, which is what happens with many OEMs now. (I hate uninstalling Real from a new Dell, btw.)
As for the second query, I’m not sure scale should come into play. If a consumer wants a Mac, they’re forced to get iChat. If a consumer wants a Windows PC, they’re forced to get WMP. The crime is the same, and I can’t reconsile with myself if scale plays a role. Perhaps these should be viewed as two separate markets since that’s closer to what they seem to be at the moment - people who want to buy a Mac, and people who want a PC.
No argument there.
I don’t think I missed the point. If the developers want the most people possible viewing their sites, they would use the lowest common denominator. Just because IE is used the most, doesn’t mean it’s used exclusively.
Of course, there must be a cut off… I don’t ask any of my web developers to develop for Lynx, as long as it’s usable. But we get by just fine testing on a number of browsers on many platforms. In our industry Macs have a fair share, so to code only for IE would be suicide. But to code for Safari or FF and ignore IE would be just as bad.
Well, I think this is where our disagreement is - Microsoft aren’t being forced to bundle competitors’ software, they are being forced to offer OEMs a version that doesn’t have WMP bundled. This is entirely different.
Certainly, and that’s what this ruling seeks to enable - at the moment OEMs have only the choice of WMP, or WMP + something else. This is unfair to the something elses, and simply giving the OEMs the option of not bundling WMP is not unfair to Microsoft. It’s enforcing a level playing field.
There’s certainly an argument to be made that the Mac market is incestuous enough to warrant consideration as a market in its own right, but I’m not sure I’d agree. Once you’ve defined your market, however, I think scale is a crucial measure of whether a company is abusing its power. I just tend to think that an inclusive view of the market is best. If I accepted the view of the Mac world as a discrete market, then I would certainly agree that Apple behave anti-competitively within that market, since they controls it in its entirety. However, I prefer to view the consumer software market as a whole, since there is (to my mind) not a great deal of functional distinction between Apples and PCs as far as the average consumer’s use is concerned (wait for the howls ;)).
Looking over some more articles on the ruling, it looks like Microsoft won’t be bundling anything with the new version of XP - it cut out WMP entirely. MS did ask a judge to consider allowing XP with links to third-party software (which seems silly to me), and that was denied.
Okay, I’m starting to see your view… removing WMP would certainly level the field for Real, etc. Only time will tell if OEMs in the EU will bother installing XP-RME (or whatever the name will be) with some other media software, or just keep XP w/ WMP and add other software to that.
As for the boxed version, why would anyone want to buy Windows minus software? If you don’t like WMP, install what you want. If you really don’t like WMP, uninstall it and install what you want. (To be fair, MS could put WMP in Add/Remove Programs instead of Windows Components, which fewer people know about.)
I can’t really see going into a store and paying the same amount for less software. It never hurts to have an extra media player for some funky file format or codec. (IMHO, of course)
Your view fits the view of the courts (so far). Apple and Microsoft are competitors, with MS holding a significant share.
I don’t find Apple had much better practices in it’s time than Microsoft does now. Apple sued most of the companies creating clones of their really old stuff (such as VTech and Franklin). Later, with the Mac, since much of the OS was dependant on the ROM, Apple knew that anyone with a clone must have illegally duplicated the ROM and would be easy lawsuit fodder. Apple later decided to pick up market share with a clone program and licensed the ROM and OS to select companies who paid a royalty. Jobs eventually decided to kill the clone program and ended all licensing agreements, which ended up in the aquisition of Power Computing.[/hijack]
[QUOTE=GorillaMan]
To extend the analogy a little too far, isn’t that more like blaming cars for crashing when driven by unqualified drivers?
[quote]
Nope. I can be sitting still in my car, get hit my a moving car and get seriously hurt if I don’t wear a seat belt. Letting computer makers sell unsafe products, costing private individuals and companies uncountable # of man hours in damage is akin to a Ford dealer telling the costumor of a brand new town car that seat belts can be bought at Midas.
Of course not, silly. Cheaper than buying a software firewall - you are aware that those free versions come in full versions, no? And that some software makers, Symantec for one, don’t have free versions.
Zone alarm (free version) might do the job - but since it’s one of the most used, I bet hackers are targeting it and trying to find weak spots (don’t know if they’ll manage). A hardware FW is always on (I had ZA freeze for me, needing to restart it), and it doesn’t hog RAM or CPU cycles.
