You're mistaken. I'd venture that the reason most people buy Apple hardware is because of the hardware, not the software. My survey, while not scientific, has a pretty large sample of friends, relatives and colleagues...and myself. I've owned many Macs (and iPods) and the major reason I purchased the products in every case was the hardware design. Macs look good. Mac OS is...ok. Overrated in many ways, nice in others. Not the bee's knees. iPods are an even better example. The iPod hardware is awesome...easy to use, look great, good ergonomics (except that the wheel can be overly sensitive). But iTunes is a total abomination. The only reason I use it is because Apple requires it. I don't own a Zune but have used the Zune software on PC's and it is FAR superior to iTunes. Just try it and see for yourself.

That's not the question. Your note suggested that MSFT had something to do with asking employees to "vote" on the paycut. That's almost certainly not the case. But that would involve objective thinking.

Did you even read the posting? It wasn't Microsoft that did this. It was a vendor that contracts with Microsoft. But framing this as a Microsoft is evil topic gets it on to the /. home page because everyone gets their panties in a twist and drives /. traffic up. Dumb.

How well did it sell? From what I understand, Windows Server 2008 has sold incredibly well, faster than any other server OS in history in its first year. That's certainly one measure of success.

Seems like nit-picking to me but that's what /. is all about, isnt' it? Columbia's clean room bios is an interesting bit of trivia but ultimately a small footnote in the history of computing...hard to compare that to Microsoft's smarts/luck in getting IBM to sign a non-exclusive license for their version of DOS. Then Microsoft was smart enought to license it to anyone that wanted it. Yes, the principles of open source software have been around a very long time. But it wasn't until the 90's that it became maintream due to Linux and other open source software. Still, good nit-picking! Keep up the good work!

People (especially those who were born after 1985 forget that Microsoft entire business model was founded on principles of openness. They were smart enough to get IBM to agree to a non-exclusive license for early versions of DOS so they could then license it to Compaq and, eventually, hundreds of other PC manufacturers. They build Windows in a way that made it incredibly easy to build hardware and software that worked on it. They provided tools...and encouarged other companies to develop their own tools, that helped developers take advantage of the platform. While the OP can point to XBOX and Zune as examples of vertical integration between HW and SW, those are edge cases. The bulk of Microsoft success has come from opening up their API's to anyone who wanted to use them. Even Office and SharePoint and all of there other client and server software are designed to be extensible. It was only in the 1990's that "open" came to mean something different...open sourcecode. Microsoft has generally not opened up their sourcecode but have done so in some cases. But by historical standards they've been incredibly open. Compared to Apple, Microsoft is the bastion of transparancy and openness. Apple controls everything as much as they can...and sue's those who try to build PC's that run MacOS.

Questioning whether a 4 year old can enter into a contract? Really? Perhaps her parents did it for her? Who cares? Lame /. post.

Perhaps her parents took care of that for her? Is that really the best you've got? Wow.

Insightful? Wow. If you knew anything about what's going on at Microsoft and how development of major products like Windows works you'd eat those words. Windows 7 is not a "marketing play." Windows 7 reflects a pretty fundamental shift in the way the company does product planing, development and test. They did what they used to do years go: plan the product and feature set and then stick to it. Gone are the days of individual developers or small teams deciding to add the next "cool feature" just because. They turned the formerly ad-hoc planning process into a pretty nice machine. The result is not mind-blowing - they released the first (significantly) public milestone version at PDC last fall as largely feature complete. It lacked some of the UI updates but in terms of the core OS it was done. Then when they released the beta early in January it was essentially a done product. Yes, there are bugs. I've seen some of them in action. But they seem to be relatively minor. So my point is that while you could argue that Windows 7 is what Vista should have been (I sort of agree), it is a product that was developed under completely different leadership with completely different processes and, apparently, completely different results. Is it a good idea to not name it Windows Vista 2009? Duh.

You don't seem to know much about software development. There is no such thing as bug free software. Every piece of software ever written has bugs. Every single piece of software ever released as a final product has bugs. The question is whether or not those bugs are show stoppers...meaning they break something critical to the functionality of the product. In the case of Windows 7...I'd venture to guess that more people will have beta tested the product than any other single release in the history of software. More people are probably running Windows 7 now than are running Linux...at least on desktop machines. I have Win7 running on two machines. Is it the perfect product? No but I'd challenge you to show me one that is. I have Ubuntu running on two machines and I can assure you that Ubuntu is far form perfect. Drivers problems galore. Lots of software incompatibility. Quirks. Slowdowns. The myth of Linux being somehow above reproach is just that: a myth. My impression of Win7 is that it is head and shoulders better than Windows XP and Windows Vista. All devices the devices I have that work with Windows Vista work with Windows 7. The system is snappy...something Windows Vista could never claim. The user experience improvements are subtle enough to not require major re-learning but significant enough that I appreciate (most of) them. When I installed Win7 on my first machines I assumed I'd try it out for a few weeks and then rebuilt the systems with an earlier version of Windows or another Linux distro. Since the install the thought never crossed my mind(of course, I'm fortunate enough to have a bunch of old machines around).

Besides search, GMAIL (sort of...) and Google Maps, what has Google done that has been successful. Even Google Maps and GMAIL are distant 2nd or 3rd in their categories. Most of their non-search efforts have failed - or at least haven't done a hell of a lot. Lively dead. Picasa forgotten. Google Apps...trying hard but no significant share. All their other experiments? Intersting toys. Perhaps this is why their stock deserves to be $250/share instead of $500/share like it was earlier this year. Search is a KILLER business but eventually Microsoft or someone else will make progress and catch up with them. The 'switching cost' for a search engine is zero.