Great, so if I want decent performance out of one of the most popular internet video services, I am tied to Windows. Yuck.

I think even Microsoft has seen the writing on the wall for Flash. However, if you no longer need Flash to view videos on the web that's just one more reason why you don't need Windows. Luckily for us, Microsoft wants all of us to replace the horrible Flash with the new and improved Microsoft Silverlight. :p

Thanks, but no thanks. I'm one of the ones hoping for HTML5 video to take off.

It's true that Microsoft gave Apple an infusion of cash and guaranteed software support for the Mac platform just when it needed it most, but Microsoft was not doing it to be benevolent. It was just beginning to defend itself from the accusations of being a monopoly and needed a "harmless" alternative to the Windows ecosystem they could point to. At the time, Microsoft needed Apple to survive.

Microsoft never thought in a million years thought Apple could ever be a serious competitor to their core business. After all, Microsoft's main business was selling software to computer manufacturers, while Apple sold consumer computer systems directly to a limited subset of consumers. To Microsoft, Apple's competitors seemed to be the likes of IBM, Dell, Gateway, Compaq, HP, Packard Bell, etc., all of which purchased their software from Microsoft. With an over 90% market share, Microsoft didn't seem to have anything to worry about from the "beleaguered" Apple.

Fast forward about a decade and a half. The internet has exploded and become the primary way people get and store information. For the first time in computer history, you are less tied to a specific application written by a specific company to access information. As a result, Apple's computer market share is over 10% for the first time since 1994. More and more people are even using non-PC devices to access information. In the exploding smart phone market, Microsoft is now in third place behind Research In Motion and Apple. And with Google now throwing its hat into the smart phone market ring there is even more competition in that sector.

Microsoft is competing with Apple the mobile music device market, and losing. Microsoft is competing with Nintendo and Sony in the home video game market, and losing. Microsoft is competing with RIM and Apple in the smart phone operating system market and losing. Microsoft is losing on a lot of fronts.

Sure, Microsoft is winning is in PC operating systems and PC business software. But as more and more people realize that they don't need a PC with Microsoft software to access and process their information, that market will become less and less important and will lose "share" to seemingly unrelated market areas.

Make no mistake, Apple and Microsoft and Google and Sony and a litany of other technology companies are direct competitors in the, as yet, undefined "electronic information access" market.

As much as the iPhone is locked down, Apple still seems to remember that it is damned near impossible to make a successful computer systems or information access devices without successful third party support. And it gets real complicated when your third parties are also your competitors. Which competitor should Apple help gain a foothold in a market they are nearly dominating? Microsoft? Google? Of course, the simple answer is neither, but that just would hurt Apple in the long run.

Now that we are emerging from the dark ages of the Microsoft monopoly of computer tech, we are headed into very interesting times indeed.

Does it make me a bad person if my immediate reaction to someone who would respond this way is to omit the "or yourself" part?

Any application you start after changing the setting should respect the setting. Otherwise, if you want all your apps (including Finder) to use it, you can just log out and log back in.

Or you can use Mac OS X's (incomplete and officially unsupported) Resolution Independence to scale the entire GUI. If you want your interface to be 25% larger than normal, open up a Terminal and enter:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleDisplayScaleFactor 1.25

To get it back to normal, just enter:

defaults write NSGlobalDomain AppleDisplayScaleFactor 1.00
defaults delete NSGlobalDomain AppleDisplayScaleFactor

Who is "they" and how would they impose these arbitrary limits on photo retouching?

The problem isn't necessarily with the advertising agencies who are trying their best to fool us that their client/product is "better" than they actually are. That's what they've always done and that is what they will continue to do.

The problem is with the increasing number of people in our society who lack critical thinking skills and don't question what is presented to them.

What's nefarious about this particular DMCA take down notice is that its only purpose is to squelch critical opinion on advertising techniques. (It is also just another example of how the DMCA has little to do with copyright protection and is more about handing over control of our culture to the media companies).

Your logic would be spot on if Microsoft's Mac offering were indeed direct ports of their Windows counterparts. But they are not.

One of the major reasons the MBU exists is because of the horribly ill-fated idea of throwing out the Mac-native Word for Mac 5.0/5.1 and using the Word for Windows 2.0/3.0 codebase to come up with Word 6.0 for both Mac and Windows. (You can read details of this debacle directly from a MBU employee).

The majority of Microsoft's Mac products are complete re-implementations of the features in their Windows counterparts (and the reason why there is not complete feature-parity between the two versions).

I think the reason that the MBU has such high profit margins is that are fewer "cooks in the kitchen" relative to Microsoft's Windows-related projects. It's a small group of dedicated employees who are in the unenviable position of trying to make great Mac software while being viewed by some on the outside as just more drones from the evil Windows empire.