What's behind Microsoft's fall from dominance?

[commodorejohn]

It's different, if you can't cope with different then the Windows 8 UI change is not your biggest obstacle in life.

And once again, we fall back on "well you're just a stupid poopyhead who's afraid of change!" Gee, it's almost like engaging the argument on any other terms might lead to having to argue about Metro's actual quality or appropriacy to a desktop/laptop setting or something.

What's behind Microsoft's fall from dominance? Maybe its insistence on trying to set "new directions" nobody wants and inflict them on the userbase by force rather than listen to what its users have been telling it for years now...

[commodorejohn]

I get the point that Microsoft are not as dominate as they use to be, but terminal decline???

It may indeed be a little premature for such a declaration. On the other hand, MS are quite thoroughly alienating themselves from their existing customer base in pursuit of a market that they have consistently failed to get a foothold in for well over a decade now. That's what's known in technical circles as "Wile E. Coyote sawing the tree limb out from under himself."

[commodorejohn]

I like how your argument boils down to "nobody dislikes Windows 8 except for all the people who dislike Windows 8, and they're all either haters or sheep so they don't count." Very sensible.

[commodorejohn]

The sheep hated Windows 95 because of the Start Menu when it was added. They'll hate Windows 8 because it's removed. They all come round in the end after they get over themselves. There were people who insisted that they preferred using Program Manager http://toastytech.com/guis/win95progman.png, it didn't last long though as eventually their fake outrage wasn't funny enough to justify the pain.

Okay, so we've gone from "nobody hates Windows 8 except for all the people who hate Windows 8, and they don't count" to "they don't count because of what different people thought eighteen years ago."

Convincing.

[commodorejohn]

I think the Linux distros should also be subject to the same controls as Microsoft, if you get five free media players bundled with Linux then how is anyone ever going to compete with those. You could argue that they should get bundled too, but that misses the point of allowing competition.

So you want to screw over people using a free OS by applying commercial restrictions to a non-commercial product simply for the sake of making Microsoft look less cheap for dropping something that cost them a small fraction of their sale price.

Yeah, that's totally a reasonable stance.

[commodorejohn]

It is totally reasonable to expect Apple and the  Linux distros to have to adhere to the same rules as Microsoft.
 
It's much more reasonable than expecting them to eat the cost.

Well, uh, is Apple not subject to the rules? AFAIK they still ship a DVD player with OSX, but is there any indication that they're not paying the requisite licensing fees for the technology? Because let's be entirely clear here, Microsoft deliberately dropped DVD playback to avoid having to pay those fees, not because of some mean ol' court order that says they aren't allowed to have useful features in their OS or anything.

(Also, can you provide a source for your claim that their move had to do with pressure from CyberLink? I'm turning up articles where CyberLink attributes a boost in sales to Windows 8 having dropped its native DVD support, but I'm not seeing anything about them having been a party to that decision.)

As for Linux: no. A non-commercial venture is not subject to the restrictions a commercial one faces because it is non-commercial. If Microsoft didn't want to make money off Windows they could indulge just as freely. That is how patent laws work. Your idea that Microsoft is somehow entitled to a "level playing field" against a project maintained by independent developers and non-profits and given away for free is simply ludicrous, and again goes to show (like your claims in another thread that forcing locked-down software distribution is necessary because not forcing it is somehow "subsidizing open-source") that your basic philosophy is "everybody who doesn't like Microsoft's new direction can get bent, end of debate."

[commodorejohn]

Simple: non-commercial projects are exempt from a lot of restrictions like patents, and Linux is largely non-commercial. (I'm not sure what enterprise vendors like Red Hat do - do they not ship DVD players? Pay licensing fees? I dunno.)

[commodorejohn]

LOL, I don't think anyone will be taking advantage of this offer.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/09/12/microsoft-starts-buying-used-ipads-for-200-microsoft-store-gift-cards-pushes-surface

Yes, folks, they're paying people to buy a Surface. Oy gevalt. Seriously, Microsoft, just take a mulligan on this tablet thing already.

[commodorejohn]

That was definitely one of the reasons and it's a really justifiable one.

I'm not arguing that. It's their decision, and while I think it was a stupid one, it's not fundamentally wrong.
 

Let us be clear, you can't possibly know whether Microsoft were threatened to drop DVD playback. I was merely showing that Apple bundling everything with the OS while Microsoft getting hassle was a real thing & therefore comparing Windows & MacOS like that is like breaking someones leg and then punishing them for not being able to run a marathon.

I can't possibly know? Since when was I the one claiming that? You openly claimed that Microsoft dropped DVD playback in response to pressure by other vendors - I'm asking if you have a source for that.
 

Your ability to troll is wasted here.

My ability to troll is never wasted.
 

Do you realise your righteous indignation makes you sound like a git?

Do you think I care?

(Also, that wasn't even righteous indignation, that was exhausted disgust.)

[commodorejohn]

No, I didn't openly claim that. I said that comparing Windows with MacOS on bundled software was flawed because Apple don't get sued while Microsoft do.
 
You obviously are exhausted as you can't even troll effectively anymore.

I won't dispute that it can get exhausting dealing with you and your "everything Microsoft does is perfection and wonder!!! Anyone who doesn't like it is just a hater!" nonsense. However:

So Microsoft get pressure to drop it from Cyberlink/WinDVD, who made better products.

This is what you said in a post that you made which I have now linked to twice. Its meaning is not changed by its context. Did you or did you not mean what this sentence says? If you did, can you provide a source?

[commodorejohn]

People wouldn't facepalm so much if you didn't make them.

[commodorejohn]

I never said that everything Microsoft did was 100% perfection. I only put mention them at all because you repeatedly say that everything that Microsoft does is 100% pure evil.

Perhaps in whatever parallel dimension you're posting from I say that, but here in the real world I've repeatedly said that I find Microsoft's technical underpinnings to be generally excellent and Windows XP to be a fine operating system all-around, and far prefer it to either OSX or Linux, and that my chief problem with the whole Windows 8 project is their getting away from what they're actually good at to chase a trend they've been failing at for over a decade.

I'm not quite sure how that equals "they're pure evil."
 

I mean what the sentence says, you don't get the importance of the word So.

No, evidently I don't. Could you clarify?

Edit: oh, you did:

It's obvious that cyberlink and windvd would be unhappy about windows 7  supporting dvd playback. But no I don't have any recordings of phone  calls or copies of confidential emails that can prove that to you.  However there is plenty of evidence that shows that when Microsoft  bundle anything that the software industry already supplies then they  get sued. I assumed you'd realize that.

So no, you don't have any evidence at all that what you claimed happened actually happened, other than comparing it to that one time twelve years ago that they got in trouble for bundling IE because Netscape went crying to the government about it - and they've kept bundling IE ever since, along with an assload of other software, and had how many other such instances, exactly?

[commodorejohn]

Microsoft were sued in 2009 and 2013 because of IE. They were sued in 2003 for windows media player. There are plenty other examples I can pull out if you want to feel more wrong.

Ah yes, I'd forgotten about the EU and their lawsuit-happy ways. But I'd "feel more wrong" if I'd actually said there weren't any other times instead of asking whether you were referring to any other instances. But, you know, go ahead and keep responding to what you imagine it is that I'm saying. It's kind of fun seeing what the alternate-universe me who hates Microsoft and loves Linux thinks about this.

And oh, by the way: still no actual evidence whatsoever that what you claim happened happened.

[commodorejohn]

Stop backtracking. Your justification was that it was all that time ago, you weren't taking into account that it was recent. Although being along time ago is still relevant.

"Your justification is irrelevant except for its actually being relevant!"

Whatever. Got any actual evidence yet?

[commodorejohn]

No, not whatever. You lied.
 
Maybe you should feel more wrong now.
 
"That one time" means "there weren't any other times".

Eh. Even if I had lied instead of simply having forgotten, that would, as they say, just make two of us. I mean, at least I just forgot and didn't invent a conspiracy out of whole cloth with no supporting evidence whatsoever to explain something that's far more easily explained as a simple cost-cutting measure.