How is Microsoft leveraging monopoly to take over another sector? Do you have proof of this? Are they saying that vendors would not be allowed to sell other Microsoft products if they don't help their ARM-based devices take over?

As far as I can see, they haven't been leveraging their monopoly to do anything. Simply by going to another market is not leveraging monopoly.

It's only a problem if you hold a monopoly. Currently Linux and Android are more popular than Windows on ARM-based devices.

David

There, fixed the title for you. This is a security feature.

Even the article in the summary notes that this is about Windows Phone and ARM-based notebooks, and neither are where Microsoft has a monopoly on market share. So what about if you go out and pick one of the thousands other products that has Linux or Android to begin with? In turn Microsoft severaly increases protection about boot sector malware on devices.

The funny thing is that this is exactly what Linux users have been asking for. They have been bitching about bad security of Windows, and now that Microsoft takes good and required steps to improve it, they start bitching how the security features lock out Linux. What about thinking before opening your mouth in the future? And why not bitch at Apple for locking down OS X and iPhone's too?

The most important thing is - Microsoft's OS's have minimal market share on ARM-based device. There's thousands of devices with Linux and Android, just pick one of those.
Cheers,
David E. Sell

Weaknesses? Most likely, as all products have. But something that really bugs me? No, not in the products I use, at least. Of course you can always improve something, but I can't really think of specific thing that I would hate.

I was going to point out that I've always thought IE is somewhat slow to use, but I before I posted I quickly tested IE9 and man has that improved, both performance and UI wise. Since it also supports HTML5 and other standards I don't think there's anything to complain about it. Firefox and Chrome like addons would be nice touch, but I personally use Opera anyway.

Why would it be Microsoft's job to port OpenGL to Windows and not the authors? I don't bitch at them porting my code, either.

Of the top of my head, I hate that Microsoft killed The Courier tablet and didn't see the potential it had. It was the first tablet that really got me excited, and in my opinion it was bad decision not to go further with it.

What's wrong with a solid, stable company? Except of course if you are doing stock trading you want lots of highs and downs, but otherwise it shouldn't matter. Stock price has little to do with how good company is doing, other than revenue wise. In Microsoft's case it just shows that Microsoft is a solid company and will stay stable as it is for many years.

That might be so with the individual products, but there's another factors at play too. For example, for games DirectX has always been better than any other product. It has some minor competition from OpenGL and previously Glide, but they aren't even in the same ballpark and never have been. DirectX is complete package, technologically more advanced and has always had better documentation. It has always been better choice, both to developers and technologically.

This in turn made Windows really popular among gamers, even up to current day. It also did the groundwork for Microsoft to go for game consoles.

Similarly, Visual Studio and development tools have always been top-notch, and creating the huge software economy that Windows has. All of these things have helped Windows indirectly.

Microsoft is mostly interested in providing a platform, and they do it very well. Neither Linux or OS X go that extra mile.

No, sorry, I'm not the same guy, I don't work at Microsoft. Seems like we just share the same name.

David

Windows is far more secure now. Nowadays malware mostly comes either via third party programs like Flash and PDF reader or via social engineering - like those sites which claim you have a virus and need to install this program or you need to install codec. Windows itself is very secure.

Interestingly it was also one of the reasons why people initially hated Vista. The security model of Windows changed so much that many legacy apps stopped working and driver needed to be updated. Windows users also weren't adjusted to having to work under non-admin account. That was the reason most people had issues with Vista, and by the time Windows 7 came out, application and hardware vendors had fixed their issues. Windows 7 is a very good OS, actually so good that Microsoft really needs to step up their game in windows 8 so that W7 won't become the new XP.

In my opinion Microsoft has really fixed their issues with security. Internet Explorer 9 is one of the most secure browsers around. It is currently sharing the first position with Chrome. IE9 has sandboxing, JIT hardening and other ways to make vulnerable plug-ins like Flash and PDF reader have less access to the system. Firefox is currently lacking any of these, so if you use Firefox and you are being hit with Flash or PDF vulnerability, your changes of being infected are much larger than when using Chrome or IE9.

Given that Apple is using Microsoft's Azure cloud services for their iCloud platform, I have no doubt that they can both secure the platform and develop good software to developers that can help developing secure software. After the security disaster at Microsoft tens years ago, they have added security features to both their internal tools, but also to the likes of Visual Studio. VS nowadays has many features that can help prevent the most usual security problems. Since Visual Studio is integrated with Azure, many developers will be using it and also having the advantage of those features.

Cheers,
David E. Sell