Further, the software packages of this type from Microsoft are tied to a specific version of the Windows Operating system; that is, you can not take a version of Office intended for use on Windows XP, and run it on Windows 7 or later versions of the Microsoft OS platform. This explicit and intentional tying is monopolistic in nature. Further, the glue code for the vertical market systems previously mentions, *also* will not run on non-XP platforms.
Effectively, this means that Microsoft is leveraging their monopoly position in operating systems - specifically, with regard to the discontinuation of support for XP - into additional sales of non-OS Microsoft products, and to sales of middleware components and development tools. As a necessary side effect, they create a market for third parties to port code they've already written to the new middleware and applications components running on the new platform, without actually providing additional value for the intentional binary incompatibility of the user space code.
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Forced "upgrades" which aren't actually "upgrades", since they don't provide fixes without damaging binary compatibility, are almost always a bad idea.
Not that Apple is completely innocent of this tactic with regard to new iOS versions; they've recently disabled the ability to turn off sync and update downloads happening over the cellular data connection, even though there are usage caps and extra costs to the user if this is left on, and they consistently pop up complaint dialogs when they can't fit the update into the storage on a 16G iPhone, and suggest you delete stuff to make room.
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In any case, the Windows XP end of life has been handled very, very badly, and the papers author has some great points, from a legal perspective, given the findings of fact on the monopolistic power by the courts in the Netscape case.
I have read this a number of times and I can only assume you have never used a windows computer. The versions of office and windows are in no way restricted, I am running components form Office 2003, 2010 and 2013 on Windows 7 and Office XP, 2003 and 2010 on windows XP.
Windows Vista, 7 and 8 all have compatibility mode which tries with varying degrees of success to fool older pieces of software that they are running old versions of windows.
Apple and Steve Jobs who you seem to hold up as the paragons of backwards compatibility virtue are(where) awful at any form of backwards compatibility or support Snow Leopard (10.6 released 08/09) does not get the same level of patching that the Lion (10.7 07/11) and Mountain Lion (10.8 07/12) and Mavericks (10.9 10/13) get Leopard (10.5 10/07) is unsupported.
Microsoft is no longer considered to be anti-trust the sanctions imposed expired in 2007, Microsoft agreed to a two year extension and offered to continue complying until 2012 although the DOJ turned down the offer. So a case brought in 2001 for actions in the 90s and all punishments or restrictions expired five years ago probably has little baring on 2014 where their market share has dropped form 95% to 65%
