That is the subsidized iPhone price with contract, not the true price of the iPhone.

Hilarious, see how the only paragraph you mention that exist is paragraph 17. The post wasn't that long.

Microsoft Surface was actually started around 2001 or the idea was originally formulated then. It was not a response to the iPhone, maybe the announcement was, but the development of the technology wasn't.

It is a common practice to ask a question (that is leading, for which a statement would have been more appropriate), but it is also common to use personal attacks, doesn't make either needed in a discussion. Also, really? 'Earth 2009'? Continue.

Microsoft Surface is not a vaporous product, not everything take a couple years to finalize and release. Can you give me more examples of complete products Microsoft has announced which are vaporous (hardware related) or never made it to market?

Also, Microsoft recently released SP1 for surface, hardly the sign of a vaporous product.
http://www.crunchgear.com/2009/05/11/microsoft-surface-sp1-adds-features...
http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/147427,how-microsoft-surface-opens-up...
-recent news

http://www.mujweb.cz/www/regulace/EB038/Microsoft2.doc

I looked over the document and several things become clear. (I will identify the author(s) as he/his/etc. as there doesn’t seem to be a name provided).

The article you provided is very one sided in its dispersion of the facts and only provide details that supported his view. The antitrust theories and claims to ethical misconduct by Microsoft are questionable. Even if something leaves a bad taste in your mouth, it does not give you the privilege of busting up other people’s property as you see fit. It appears he wrote the article with the thought, ‘Microsoft is guilty’ rather than ‘Is Microsoft innocent, guilty or a combination of both?’

His writing seems to indicate that he believes that law=ethics and so if Microsoft was violating the law, it was being unethical, even if those laws were shoddy. Further, why the constant mention of monopoly everywhere? Why is it not discussed what a monopoly actually is so those reading know exactly what the issue at hand is? His use of select quotes from Microsoft employees often seem truncated and do not reveal the true intent. I do not have time to look at all his sources or their validity.

Also what is rarely explained is how Microsoft goes from the initial ‘embrace’ step to actually getting consumers (corporate or otherwise) to buy enough of their product to give them market power. I am skeptical of punishing a company for entering markets, providing a product that consumers then buy and subsequently punishing them for it. Also, his ‘higher prices’ claim near the end does not hold water, especially when inflation is taken into account. And arguing about release dates or ‘quality’ of a product from select reviewers (many of who have a biased against Microsoft), doesn’t lend credibility to the supposed case against Microsoft.

Further, it is the essence of a monopoly not to be pressure to innovate as much once it has a dominant position, this is not somehow exclusive to Microsoft as the article implies. Of course they (or any other company) will be highly innovative when competition is fierce and stagnant when there is no competition. Look at Apple and the iPod line.

Also, many of his arguments are not valid in that he quickly goes from several propositions to a conclusion which may only be partially supported (high market share->’inferior product’->means OEMs not conforming to consumer demands)
---
Word is a monopoly in terms of market share, but WordPerfect, Open Office, etc. can use .doc and other Word file formats (and in WP's case, is superior in many regards). And unlawful behavior does not mean unethical behavior, especially when the laws are founded on shoddy philosophic and ethical foundations.

Regarding the graphic shown, Word was clearly beating WordPerfect before the alleged ‘scheme’ started to take place in 1994; it appears the trajectory was such that the two productivity suits would have ended up with the same market share regardless.

Also, I and many others I know, chose to switch to Word from WordPerfect not because of some Microsoft pressure or de facto standard issue, but because the product (Word) is in fact better than WordPerfect for many task and its superior integration with Excel and other Office programs is more fluid and productive than Corel's WordPerfect suit of software (Quattro, Presentations, etc.). Microsoft didn’t ‘extinguish’ WordPerfect, and the ‘barrier to entry’ here is made up, as I have continued to be able to use WordPerfect fine up until I decided to switch to Word. Also, Outlook (ignoring its integration features) is very usable and holds up well to other email clients such as Thunderbird. The calendar portion of Outlook leaves some things to be desired though.

What he does not say in his end remarks on how Microsoft’s Office productivity monopoly has hurt consumers is that Word 2007 can still save files in old standards and can even load competing products proprietary file-types, such as WordPerfect, quite smoothly. Also, a lack of major software releases ignores SPs or other incremental changes or the nature of Office productivity, which at its core the purpose for doesn’t change that much.
---
If the author(s?) had taken an econ class, he would know that monopolies or companies with market power have different methods of calculating supply and price than companies in a competitive environment or who have to take the price as given. While this can create dead-weight loss for society, it does not necessarily mean that we would be better off wasting so many resources prosecuting Microsoft and causing it to be unproductive by altering its products and constantly having the court-battle money drain. Further, it seems that the actual costs to consumers are never calculated (including benefits), only hypothetical constructs and ‘fairness’ claims.

---
The IBM case is also frivolous. IBM was directly competing with the product Microsoft was supplying them. Thus, discriminatory pricing is not unethical, it is merely illustrating to IBM that they cost more for Microsoft since they are potentially taking away from Microsoft’s sales.

The Sun case is not accurately reported by the article, especially in light of the fact that it was Sun who ended up not renewing its license with Microsoft and thus not allowing Microsoft to bundle it with Windows versions such as XP.

The 'per processor fee' antitrust case holds no water. If the OEMs really wanted to, they would have come together as a group and pressure Microsoft into not including this clause. Without hardware OEMs, Windows would have no market (Microsoft wasn't much of a hardware producer). Further, how is this contractual arrangement, which both parties agree upon, somehow unethical and why should a third party get involved? They weren’t agreeing to gang up and force Apple to pay Microsoft fees. Notice it was the US DOJ that filed the suit, not the OEMs.
---
The ‘barrier to entry’ should not be construed as it is ‘harder’ to enter the industry, which is you need to release a substantially better product and have the PR to make the public aware (or hence all companies in such R&D heavy industries as pharmaceuticals would be brought to court for the extremely high barrier to entry inherent in that business, partially created by the monopoly granting patents the government awards). It should be seen as some sort of physical barrier to entry, something that on a true market without government intervention here and there (which is enforced by force), would not happen as it would make forceful action against another individual(s), which has ethical grounds for punishment.

The article doesn't give enough solid evidence of actual wording or ‘fear, uncertainty, and doubt’ spread by Microsoft. The fact was, Microsoft had built Windows to start being incompatible with DR-DOS (or other parts of its OS to be incompatible with other products). It's their own product, they can choose to use a competitor’s product or not.

The 'integrated' or 'tying' issue is moot. There are many features in Windows that are bundled which threaten a certain niche markets (Windows Defender, Explorer, VPN, Backup and Restore, Defrag, etc.), but including things like better security software, a browser, a media player in Microsoft's own product is to the benefit of consumers, competitors must develop a much better product in order to cause consumers to switch over and they must make it cheaper in order to compete.

Further, Microsoft has been lowering the price on its OSs, since when you take into account inflation, the $299 price tag of XP Pro vs. Vista business means that Vista cost less (to buy) and you get more (I will not go into the XP vs. Vista debate, this is about price). It has been seen that Microsoft enters industries and consequently the prices in those industries drop as companies try to compete with Microsoft (who often offers their product for less than the going price), a boon for consumers.
---
Regarding Microsoft and Netscape see the article attached at the beginning of this post. What the article does not note is that Microsoft gave away IE for free, incurring a loss on itself, and forcing Netscape to lower the price on its browser (to corporate), a benefit to consumers. Further, their strategy to tweak Internet standards never worked, as is evident by various IE versions not displaying websites that are W3C certified to have correct CSS and HTML formatting. What is interesting is that he never talks about Netscape’s monopoly on the browser market until Microsoft entered and Netscape being tied into other OSs.

Also, the 'network effect', which is apparent with Windows and Word, is something most companies (ala Google (search), Apple (iTunes+iPod), Facebook (social networking) and others) seek for certain types of consumer products that become more useful once more people are on their network. Furthermore, while Apple and Linux distros have a minority market share, for those who want to, it is not that hard to switch to them, especially now that Macs can dual boot quite easily. Though there are for some corporate users a high cost to migrate fully from Windows to OSX or another OS.

The strategy of beating its competition (through the 'embrace, extend, extinguish' strategy) is not straight up unethical as the article claims and does not spend enough time looking at the merits of the strategy.
---
‘Microsoft apologist’ is not really needed; don't give people labels. Is there a purpose to giving me a label then making an underhanded insult with it? It does not belong.

I am question the ethical conduct of the Justice Department and the EU. Antitrust laws are taken by many as a given, not many people question whether they are actually hurting society should a cost-benefit analysis be done.

Furthermore, what is the purpose of this question 'When was that announced again? And when will it be available for everyone to purchase?'? Go look it up if you care to know and then make a statement regarding it, don't ask ambiguous questions meant as hidden attacks.

And ‘You must live in some alternate reality,’ is neither helpful nor true. Stop with the personal attacks.

Thank you if you got this far.

http://www.aynrand.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5274
http://blog.mises.org/archives/005656.asp
http://www.mises.org/article.aspx?Id=419&FS=+Break+Up+Microsoft?
http://www-hsc.usc.edu/~mbernste/tae.ethics&law.herrera.html
http://www.scu.edu/ethics/practicing/decision/framework.html

Underhanded insults, sarcasm, all-cap words, misleading claims - these are some of the methods you used which are not involved in a valid argument.

Insulting someone's grammar is first rate ad homenim; the 'skills' comment was unneeded and demeaning; 'AHEM' and 'WHO' have no place, people here can read and understand without the distracting caps; and 'this whole Project Vapor' is a statement which does not hold. Other companies have already developed similar technology and Microsoft, even if they didn't develop it first, has a knack for putting out a product, even if it doesn't meet expectations.

'Poor Microsoft: always the follower, never the innovator' is a false claim.
innovate
-to make changes : do something in a new way
Microsoft does not have to be the very first company to produce something or have its engineers be the pioneers. On the other hand, it was able to make the necessary changes to release a product that people will buy. Furthermore, business is not solely about innovation, but anticipating and catering to those who buy in your market, which, especially in IT, Microsoft is good at.

There will be those who claim that people don't buy Microsoft products anymore, they are just 'forced' into buying them. First, unless someone can provide me an article, I have never heard of Microsoft coercing consumers into buying their products (file type lock-in and other proprietary schemes is not coercion, the consumer should take into account that file-types, etc. are not portable across all systems. There are also Linux and OSX file formats that Windows OSs won't recognize). Second, the EU and other governments seem to forget that Windows OS is Microsoft's OS, not public property or domain as they claim, telling them they can't put certain features on is akin to telling Lexus they can't make a specialty part on their car that makes it so you have to get your seats from them.

Companies like Apple don't innovate as much as people give them credit for, even OSX is based heavily on other technologies (including the Dock, etc.) developed earlier and the real innovation of iPod+iTunes was the store and integration, the hardware is satisfactory (the scroll wheel is a horrible UI design) and the software does the job (off and on very buggy on Windows, though better on OSX).

Microsoft gets a lot of flack, even when looking at all it is doing recently (Win7, Windows Sever 2008, Virtualization push, Natal, Windows Live, Microsoft Surface, etc.) after the old guard is moving on and it is hard to understand people's deep seeded hatred of the company. Their battles with the EU and other governments are over suspect antitrust laws which need serious revision (ala Amazon.com vs Lang Law) and political discourse on their true purpose.

Project Natal sounds like a good idea beyond just video games. I wish it to succeed as it could have amazing application (should they make it viable and cheap) in clinical applications and other aspects of rehabilitation and conducting research. Video games are already helping people recover more quickly and enjoyably, it would be great to see this taken to the next level. Imagine a soccer player who has been injured. They don't want to risk kicking an actual ball too early and hurting themselves again so they instead fire up PES or FIFA on Xbox-Natal and do some light drills that keep their muscle memory intact while reducing the risk of further injury.

Lastly, the fact is, Apple/Sony/Microsoft/RIM/etc. don't care that much over these debates that flare up, at the end of the day they are making their profit, the average person has preferences or needs that once it comes time to splash the cash, this hatred of this company or that one dissolves into the practicality and usability of their product and whether it conforms to their needs.

Thanks if you got this far.