Silverlight? What's that?

/refuses to install it
//one Flash is bad enough

I remember hearing they werent going to support silver light in the future. I can't imagine anybody climbing aboard the band wagon at this juncture.

I will always hate silver light a little for something Wizards of the Coast did; they changed the useful D&D character creator from a stand alone program to a silver light app that only did half what the old app did, and managed to do it very poorly

FuturePastNow: Silverlight? What's that?


It's what Netflix uses to show streaming video.

FuturePastNow: Silverlight? What's that?

/refuses to install it
//one Flash is bad enough

I needed to install this to watch the olympics online in 2008 because it was MSnbc. I have no idea if any other website in the world uses Silverlight.

Kar98: FuturePastNow: Silverlight? What's that?


It's what Netflix uses to show streaming video.

Guess they're going to have to recode it then.

Ah, Silverlight: "Let's take everything that sucks about Flash, add some DRM crap and let it be known that it can't legally be used on non-Microsoft products without paying us retarded gobs of cash despite the free alternatives. I smell a total winner on our hands, boys!"

http://www.measureup.com uses Silverlight to deliver their study materials now.

MusicMakeMyHeadPound: Ah, Silverlight: "Let's take everything that sucks about Flash, add some DRM crap and let it be known that it can't legally be used on non-Microsoft products without paying us retarded gobs of cash despite the free alternatives. I smell a total winner on our hands, boys!"

Hey, if people will pay, then why not? Hundreds of thousands of Netflix subscribers use it daily.

MS is switching to HTML5 anyways. I doubt we'll see a Silverlight 6.

Arrgh, Silverlight!

The program my FD uses for EMS patient reports uses this janky me-too POS... Farking terrible, locks up, eats data, and can't handle basic word processing without shiatting the bed.

I have no idea why the company went with it, I'm torn between them being incompetent, cheap, or bribed by Microsoft.

Given that they recommended we buy these shiatty Dell tablets as being "optimized" for their system (hint: they weren't), I'm leaning towards the latter...

Paramedics, etc: stay the fark away from ESO Suite unless you enjoy having to use 4 machines and 5 software programs to type a single report. But who cares about functionality when it's got shiny animations, a weather widget, and a bunch of other gee-whiz bullshiat that the white shirts love?

Marine1: MS is switching to HTML5 anyways. I doubt we'll see a Silverlight 6.

We will and we won't. There won't be a Silverlight plugin. Developers will still design apps in Silverlight.

Silverlight, as much as it pains me to say this, is actually pretty smartly designed. It abstracts a lot of its APIs in a way that what appear to be client-side calls (to the developer) actually go back to the server to execute. This means that they could simply change the presentation stack from their proprietary layer to an HTML5 layer without too much difficulty.

t3knomanser: Marine1: MS is switching to HTML5 anyways. I doubt we'll see a Silverlight 6.

We will and we won't. There won't be a Silverlight plugin. Developers will still design apps in Silverlight.

Silverlight, as much as it pains me to say this, is actually pretty smartly designed. It abstracts a lot of its APIs in a way that what appear to be client-side calls (to the developer) actually go back to the server to execute. This means that they could simply change the presentation stack from their proprietary layer to an HTML5 layer without too much difficulty.

This, exactly. But, it doesn't matter - if it has Microsoft's name on it, there will always be a line of anti-Microsoft chuckleheads beating on it for no other reason.

They're including it in the kernel in 8 anyway... MS has caused Netflix more trouble than good by replacing the netflix 3.0 install link with a 4.0 install headder at ms.com The end result being it installs a version netflix can't use because the COPYRIGHT OWNERS refuse to upgrade.

That's the rub of the stupid.

Marine1: MusicMakeMyHeadPound: Ah, Silverlight: "Let's take everything that sucks about Flash, add some DRM crap and let it be known that it can't legally be used on non-Microsoft products without paying us retarded gobs of cash despite the free alternatives. I smell a total winner on our hands, boys!"

Hey, if people will pay, then why not? Hundreds of thousands of Netflix subscribers use it daily.

MS is switching to HTML5 anyways. I doubt we'll see a Silverlight 6.

Exactly.

I farking hated using it on Netflix but I'm not sure if it was the program's limitations or something imposed by Netflix...

If I paused, it seemed like any lead I had on streaming was lost and would have to wait for it build back up before the movie resumed.
If I tried rewinding, the same thing but somehow worse and the program would lag horrible.
Forget going back to a spot in the middle of a movie if the computer crashed or the power went off or anything caused the program to close for any reason.

Tax Boy: FuturePastNow: Silverlight? What's that?

/refuses to install it
//one Flash is bad enough

I needed to install this to watch the olympics online in 2008 because it was MSnbc. I have no idea if any other website in the world uses Silverlight.

MS themselves used it to put a bunch of Feynman lectures online a while ago.

Which reminds me: I should watch them.

Unfortunately Wizard's DnD Char Builder uses it...
Thick & sluggish, like tar.

'nuff said about that, I can be patient
except the damn thing can't even properly print out all the powers you've selected.

Nothing against Silverlight for that, that's a dev issue.

/Priorities, y'know.

FormlessOne: t3knomanser: Marine1: MS is switching to HTML5 anyways. I doubt we'll see a Silverlight 6.

We will and we won't. There won't be a Silverlight plugin. Developers will still design apps in Silverlight.

Silverlight, as much as it pains me to say this, is actually pretty smartly designed. It abstracts a lot of its APIs in a way that what appear to be client-side calls (to the developer) actually go back to the server to execute. This means that they could simply change the presentation stack from their proprietary layer to an HTML5 layer without too much difficulty.

This, exactly. But, it doesn't matter - if it has Microsoft's name on it, there will always be a line of anti-Microsoft chuckleheads beating on it for no other reason.

Quite a few people still think MS is the monopolistic beast it was 15 years ago. It's amazing how long people have held a grudge against MS for the 90s. Yeah, we get it, they killed OS/2 and some small companies. Being mad at Gates a decade and a half after the fact won't bring Netscape, OS/2, or BeOS back. With the exception of Windows and Office, Microsoft doesn't have much of a monopoly in anything. I wouldn't even call those two monopolies at this point. What will be interesting is to see whether or not the people who hold that grudge against Microsoft are the same ones that buy iPads/iPhones/iPods. Apple has done things to attract regulator investigations with iTunes music deals, and the fact that they're trying to argue that design similarities between the iPad and Galaxy Tab have done their company irreparable harm is ridiculous when you consider the iPad alone has around 90% of all tablet sales and outsells all other tablets combined. I think in ten or twenty years, we'll be remembering an investigation into Apple's practices more than we will what happened with Microsoft in the 90s. I would be willing to bet that you could uncover internal memos at Apple that mention a desire to drive other tablet makers out of the market.

Marine1: It's amazing how long people have held a grudge against MS for the 90s. Yeah, we get it, they killed OS/2 and some small companies. Being mad at Gates a decade and a half after the fact won't bring Netscape, OS/2, or BeOS back.

Windows ME, dude.

/ some things can never be forgiven

whenIsayGO: Marine1: It's amazing how long people have held a grudge against MS for the 90s. Yeah, we get it, they killed OS/2 and some small companies. Being mad at Gates a decade and a half after the fact won't bring Netscape, OS/2, or BeOS back.

Windows ME, dude.

/ some things can never be forgiven

11 years ago. Still mad about OS 9?

For what it's worth, the first time I used Silverlight was for the 2008 olympics and it worked really well on a VERY crappy internet connection. Since then my only interaction with it has been with Major League Soccer's internet streaming package, which streams in great quality but occasionally gets buggy with non IE browsers, forcing me to re-install it every month or so. People can rip on the program but for the purposes of sports streaming it has been a major upgrade over the RealPlayer and WMP-based streams it replaced.

Marine1:
Quite a few people still think MS is the monopolistic beast it was 15 years ago. It's amazing how long people have held a grudge against MS for the 90s. Yeah, we get it, they killed OS/2 and some small companies.

That is a gross over simplification of why, most people, dislike Microsoft and you are fully aware of it. And I don't mean OS/2 or BeOS or Netscape. I'm talking about the OEM licenses that were a, metaphorical, gun to a manufacturers head. I'm talking about "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" and fubar'd Kerberos implementations. You can skip forward in to the 2000's if you like and I'll happily point you towards the ISO committee stacking and getting a format (named in such a manner as to cause confusion with OpenOffice's XML file format), which contains several pages of "Here be Dragons" bullshiat, ratified as an actual ISO standard. A standard that to my knowledge has yet to be fully implemented in any version of Office and it turned out from documents Novell had was part of yet another farking EEE offensive.

Microsoft are a company you keep at arms length and carry a loaded shotgun around so they play nice with others; the second you drop the shotgun they are back up to their old tricks.

sarah_t_s: Marine1:
Quite a few people still think MS is the monopolistic beast it was 15 years ago. It's amazing how long people have held a grudge against MS for the 90s. Yeah, we get it, they killed OS/2 and some small companies.

That is a gross over simplification of why, most people, dislike Microsoft and you are fully aware of it. And I don't mean OS/2 or BeOS or Netscape. I'm talking about the OEM licenses that were a, metaphorical, gun to a manufacturers head. I'm talking about "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" and fubar'd Kerberos implementations. You can skip forward in to the 2000's if you like and I'll happily point you towards the ISO committee stacking and getting a format (named in such a manner as to cause confusion with OpenOffice's XML file format), which contains several pages of "Here be Dragons" bullshiat, ratified as an actual ISO standard. A standard that to my knowledge has yet to be fully implemented in any version of Office and it turned out from documents Novell had was part of yet another farking EEE offensive.

Microsoft are a company you keep at arms length and carry a loaded shotgun around so they play nice with others; the second you drop the shotgun they are back up to their old tricks.

You act as if the alternative companies are better. They aren't.

Marine1: You act as if the alternative companies are better. They aren't.

tu quoque?

sarah_t_s: Marine1:
Quite a few people still think MS is the monopolistic beast it was 15 years ago. It's amazing how long people have held a grudge against MS for the 90s. Yeah, we get it, they killed OS/2 and some small companies.

That is a gross over simplification of why, most people, dislike Microsoft and you are fully aware of it. And I don't mean OS/2 or BeOS or Netscape. I'm talking about the OEM licenses that were a, metaphorical, gun to a manufacturers head. I'm talking about "Embrace, Extend, Extinguish" and fubar'd Kerberos implementations. You can skip forward in to the 2000's if you like and I'll happily point you towards the ISO committee stacking and getting a format (named in such a manner as to cause confusion with OpenOffice's XML file format), which contains several pages of "Here be Dragons" bullshiat, ratified as an actual ISO standard. A standard that to my knowledge has yet to be fully implemented in any version of Office and it turned out from documents Novell had was part of yet another farking EEE offensive.

Microsoft are a company you keep at arms length and carry a loaded shotgun around so they play nice with others; the second you drop the shotgun they are back up to their old tricks.

So much THIS.

And from a business perspective the motto is, "Let the other idiot adopt the Microsoft product first." Otherwise you end up with multi-million dollar quagmires like a SharePoint implementation or a MapPoint snafu.

/we're in talks with Google now after the MS support team decided to try and hold us over a barrel for their error

A vendor was installing a new product for us and the console required downloading silverlight. My only comment was "really? silverlight?". His response was "yea ... we know. Next version its going away".

/solved a problem no one was having

Marine1: Quite a few people still think MS is the monopolistic beast it was 15 years ago. It's amazing how long people have held a grudge against MS for the 90s. Yeah, we get it, they killed OS/2 and some small companies. Being mad at Gates a decade and a half after the fact won't bring Netscape, OS/2, or BeOS back. With the exception of Windows and Office, Microsoft doesn't have much of a monopoly in anything. I wouldn't even call those two monopolies at this point. What will be interesting is to see whether or not the people who hold that grudge against Microsoft are the same ones that buy iPads/iPhones/iPods. Apple has done things to attract regulator investigations with iTunes music deals, and the fact that they're trying to argue that design similarities between the iPad and Galaxy Tab have done their company irreparable harm is ridiculous when you consider the iPad alone has around 90% of all tablet sales and outsells all other tablets combined. I think in ten or twenty years, we'll be remembering an investigation into Apple's practices more than we will what happened with Microsoft in the 90s. I would be willing to bet that you could uncover internal memos at Apple that mention a desire to drive other tablet makers out of the market.

Yea we get it - you hate Apple. Blah blah blah.

/anti-trust investigations in the technology industry are pointless endeavors. Technology changes too quickly that no one can maintain the market unless they grow and adapt
//so much FAIL in your comment its not worth going into detail

nbcsports.com uses silverlight, and I despise it. All I want is to have it fullscreen on one monitor, and stay that way. Instead, whenever I click anywhere else, it drops out of fullscreen.

t3knomanser: Marine1: You act as if the alternative companies are better. They aren't.

tu quoque?

My point is, Microsoft is usually the only company cited and regularly despised for its anti-competitive practices. People routinely do so while straight out ignoring the anti-competitive/antitrust activities of other companies today.

I mean, can you imagine if Microsoft had done what Apple is doing today during the 1990s? Apple is straight out suing people for producing competing products while they themselves have 90% market share. It's not just Sammy, either. HTC is another one. Jobs wanted to see Android eliminated...not out-innovated, not out-sold... eliminated. It was his dying wish. He wanted to create a market (actually, two markets- tablet and smartphone) where he could set up Apple as a monopoly. He failed with the smartphone, but so far, what he left behind with Apple is succeeding in drowning out competition through mostly bogus lawsuits and injunctions. If Tim Cook (and Jobs) had their way, I bet you that Apple would be the only tablet maker on the planet, and that their position as such would be backed by a solid wall of court precedent and IP infringement injunctions. Smartphones might not be much different. It'll be interesting to see if any other platforms emerge (particularly Windows Phone), and if said platforms experience the blizzard of lawsuits that Apple has dumped on Android OEMs.

So, yeah, MS has done some crappy things in the past. No doubt about that. But E³ was something that could be stopped... and was, by the courts. What Apple is doing is much, much worse, because they're doing it through the courts. Yet we live in this tech culture which continuously harps on Microsoft for their past actions while viewing the wolf in sheep's clothing who does arguably worse things (Apple) as the innovative device maker with the little guy in mind.

Marine1: Quite a few people still think MS is the monopolistic beast it was 15 years ago. It's amazing how long people have held a grudge against MS for the 90s.

Hell, I hold a grudge against them for killing the netbook industry a couple of years ago.

The whole point of a netbook was a web-capable thin-client device for dirt cheap. Got me a nice $80 Lenovo model with a SSD drive running some chopped version of SuSe (replaced with Ubuntu Netbook Remix) in 2007. Still runs like a champ.

Then along came Microsoft who decided to up the OEM prices on PC versions of Windows unless manufacturers stopped selling non-Windows netbooks. Well, the Windows license alone is double the old price of the netbook, coupled with the fact that bloated-ass Windows couldn't fit on SSD drives. So they had to sell them with plattered hard drives, which cost much more in terms of power consumption, meaning that the manufacturer has to include a more expensive battery as well. They went from a lean mean piece of hardware to just another word for laptop.

Good luck finding a netbook for less than $200 these days. Might as well spend the extra couple bucks and get an iPad.

Fark you, Microsoft.

bravian: Marine1: Quite a few people still think MS is the monopolistic beast it was 15 years ago. It's amazing how long people have held a grudge against MS for the 90s. Yeah, we get it, they killed OS/2 and some small companies. Being mad at Gates a decade and a half after the fact won't bring Netscape, OS/2, or BeOS back. With the exception of Windows and Office, Microsoft doesn't have much of a monopoly in anything. I wouldn't even call those two monopolies at this point. What will be interesting is to see whether or not the people who hold that grudge against Microsoft are the same ones that buy iPads/iPhones/iPods. Apple has done things to attract regulator investigations with iTunes music deals, and the fact that they're trying to argue that design similarities between the iPad and Galaxy Tab have done their company irreparable harm is ridiculous when you consider the iPad alone has around 90% of all tablet sales and outsells all other tablets combined. I think in ten or twenty years, we'll be remembering an investigation into Apple's practices more than we will what happened with Microsoft in the 90s. I would be willing to bet that you could uncover internal memos at Apple that mention a desire to drive other tablet makers out of the market.

Yea we get it - you hate Apple. Blah blah blah.

/anti-trust investigations in the technology industry are pointless endeavors. Technology changes too quickly that no one can maintain the market unless they grow and adapt
//so much FAIL in your comment its not worth going into detail

I wonder if you were saying the same thing during the Justice Department investigation into Microsoft.

Probably not.

Marine1:
You act as if the alternative companies are better. They aren't.

Really? Point me to the monopoly hearings where it came out Apple had put a gun to Dell/HP/Compaq's head and told them if they didn't ship EVERY machine with OS X they'd loose all discounts on all products, a situation that would end the company.

Point me to the documentation where Be Inc. publicly stated a machine shipping without an operating system should be considered an illegal install of BeOS and the company offering said blank machine dealt with. As in sued in to oblivion, face government sanctions and such.

Point me to the documentation showing IBM had (and indeed still does have on the quiet) have a policy of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish and shoved so much vapourware PR crap out that it put competitors out of business or at the very least substantially damaged them.

And please, show me where HP got up to committee stacking and got a bullshiat standard ratified that even they, the people who wrote it, can't implement because half of it is missing.

Hey an easy one. Show me where Novell deliberately (and not via shiatty programming... fark you Client32) set out so you couldn't establish a two way trust between Netware and 'a. n. other' server OS because they "extended" an industry standard for their own ends and slapped a big "copyright" sticker over their modifications.

Yeah... didn't think you could. Microsoft are evil, they didn't earn the title "The Beast of/at Redmond" without good reason. Apple might be making a play for it but they've got a hell of a long way to go before MS's crown is in jeopardy.

Marine1: t3knomanser: Marine1: You act as if the alternative companies are better. They aren't.

tu quoque?

My point is, Microsoft is usually the only company cited and regularly despised for its anti-competitive practices. People routinely do so while straight out ignoring the anti-competitive/antitrust activities of other companies today.

I don't like MS products (the vast majority of them, at least) because they suck, not because they're made by someone who was previously convicted (or whatever the legalese is) of being a monopoly.

A few years ago, I made the conscious decision to not use MS stuff and have been pretty successful (fortunately my current job is platform-agnostic), but when I get dragged back for that program or two I can't do without, there's usually a moment of "facepalm, WHY would you do that?"

Marine1: 11 years ago. Still mad about OS 9?

No, I never used OS 9. After using Windows ME, I switched to Mac, which was at that point on OS 10.2. I also missed Vista, so my grudge might be more recent if I had stuck with Windows as my primary OS.

I liked XP a whole lot, I just felt that ME was such an unstable piece of shiat that they should have given free upgrades to XP (or 2000, or "downgrades" to 98, even).

Marine1: t3knomanser: Marine1: You act as if the alternative companies are better. They aren't.

tu quoque?

My point is, Microsoft is usually the only company cited and regularly despised for its anti-competitive practices. People routinely do so while straight out ignoring the anti-competitive/antitrust activities of other companies today.

I mean, can you imagine if Microsoft had done what Apple is doing today during the 1990s? Apple is straight out suing people for producing competing products while they themselves have 90% market share. It's not just Sammy, either. HTC is another one. Jobs wanted to see Android eliminated...not out-innovated, not out-sold... eliminated. It was his dying wish. He wanted to create a market (actually, two markets- tablet and smartphone) where he could set up Apple as a monopoly. He failed with the smartphone, but so far, what he left behind with Apple is succeeding in drowning out competition through mostly bogus lawsuits and injunctions. If Tim Cook (and Jobs) had their way, I bet you that Apple would be the only tablet maker on the planet, and that their position as such would be backed by a solid wall of court precedent and IP infringement injunctions. Smartphones might not be much different. It'll be interesting to see if any other platforms emerge (particularly Windows Phone), and if said platforms experience the blizzard of lawsuits that Apple has dumped on Android OEMs.

So, yeah, MS has done some crappy things in the past. No doubt about that. But E3 was something that could be stopped... and was, by the courts. What Apple is doing is much, much worse, because they're doing it through the courts. Yet we live in this tech culture which continuously harps on Microsoft for their past actions while viewing the wolf in sheep's clothing who does arguably worse things (Apple) as the innovative device maker with the little guy in mind.

Apple is clobbering Google because Android is STILL a farking joke.

sarah_t_s: Marine1:
You act as if the alternative companies are better. They aren't.

Really? Point me to the monopoly hearings where it came out Apple had put a gun to Dell/HP/Compaq's head and told them if they didn't ship EVERY machine with OS X they'd loose all discounts on all products, a situation that would end the company.

Point me to the documentation where Be Inc. publicly stated a machine shipping without an operating system should be considered an illegal install of BeOS and the company offering said blank machine dealt with. As in sued in to oblivion, face government sanctions and such.

Point me to the documentation showing IBM had (and indeed still does have on the quiet) have a policy of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish and shoved so much vapourware PR crap out that it put competitors out of business or at the very least substantially damaged them.

And please, show me where HP got up to committee stacking and got a bullshiat standard ratified that even they, the people who wrote it, can't implement because half of it is missing.

Hey an easy one. Show me where Novell deliberately (and not via shiatty programming... fark you Client32) set out so you couldn't establish a two way trust between Netware and 'a. n. other' server OS because they "extended" an industry standard for their own ends and slapped a big "copyright" sticker over their modifications.

Yeah... didn't think you could. Microsoft are evil, they didn't earn the title "The Beast of/at Redmond" without good reason. Apple might be making a play for it but they've got a hell of a long way to go before MS's crown is in jeopardy.

Everything you list is from the time I myself referenced as the time Microsoft as being anti-competitive/antitrust prone. I said that people won't let go of past actions at Microsoft and now ignore other companies' dubious behavior while focusing on things Microsoft did. Now, show me a time where Microsoft attempted (and in some courts succeeded) in banning any and all of their competitors' products from even being sold in major affluent Western markets.

Samsung products potentially banned in Netherlands at Apple's request (new window)

Apple denied ban of Samsung products in the United States (new window)

Apple sues HTC over 20 different patents in Android devices, asks for permanent injunction against HTC (new window)

Marine1: My point is, Microsoft is usually the only company cited and regularly despised for its anti-competitive practices.

No one's keen on Apple or Google taking control of the industry either. Apple can be easily avoided at least. However, you'll find it's completely impossible to not give Microsoft money (your tax dollars hard at work).

And as sick as Apple's injunctions are, whose lobbyists do you think paved the way for them to do that?

Personally, as a consumer, I'm all for reigning in IP laws and allowing a mighty and gratuitous hammer for anti-trust, no matter who it smashes up. Alas, I'm just an unmoneyed schlep whose idea of a successful day is one where I can pull a cold beer out of the fridge.

Marine1: Apple is straight out suing people for producing competing products while they themselves have 90% market share.

You mean jacking up the renewal prices on the ROM licenses so the clone makers would have to stop? Because beyond that you'd have a hardware company, telling itself it had to use it's own product otherwise it's product would be raised in price and they'd be put out of business.

If Apple become a monopoly in the slate market space I have no problems with that. I had no problems with Microsoft being a monopoly in the Desktop space. It's what they did when they got there that's the problem and the same applies with Apple.

Speaking of which, you do love to throw around the iOS v TouchWiz thing. Perhaps you should look at the specific version of TouchWiz that Apple has issues with... it's pretty much a clone of iOS in terms of look n' feel. But hey, I'm sure if I cloned Windows XP's interface, your sainted Microsoft would be just okedokey about that wouldn't they? No. They'd sue me back in to the dark ages and rightly so!

I've only had one run-in with Silverlight. A few years ago I thought it'd be nice to catch a game of the World Series. Decided to see the sanctioned feed. Had to download Silverlight. Never understod why, as after installing it and waiting forever for it to load it gave me something laggy with no better resolution than I could get off of numerous Flash streams. Microsoft trying poorly and sloppily to corner a new market, forcing badness upon people. I saw it around a bit after that, but never tried it again. And prior to seeing this headline I'd not come across even a mention of it in two years. Not a surprising article.

MusicMakeMyHeadPound: Marine1: My point is, Microsoft is usually the only company cited and regularly despised for its anti-competitive practices.

No one's keen on Apple or Google taking control of the industry either. Apple can be easily avoided at least. However, you'll find it's completely impossible to not give Microsoft money (your tax dollars hard at work).

And as sick as Apple's injunctions are, whose lobbyists do you think paved the way for them to do that?



Tax dollars are small pennies compared to Apple's sales. Apple surpassed MS in total value (or some measure) a few months ago. Again, people look the other way when it comes to Apple. Google is a far more complex case. Even if they are doing anti-comp/antitrust type actions, I have yet to see them have the balls to outright ask for a competing product to be banned based on patents granted years before current products were even conceived and developed, like Apple did with the HTC lawsuit.

No one wants any company to take control of an industry... consumers' minds generally don't work like that. Instead, they tend to have companies they don't want taking over a market... the Ford/Chevy debate, Continental/Lycoming, Boeing/Airbus, etc. Microsoft is often put in the light of the bad company, the one people don't patronize, because of anticomp/antitrust concerns. Apple is often seen as an alternative, though their recent actions put Microsoft's bully days to shame. That's what I'm getting at. Consumers are buying Apple products, which is fine... but at the same time, Apple is trying to make sure that the letter of the law (not just contracts or business sense or accounting reports) enforces their market dominance. Microsoft made it fiscally unappealing to offer products that didn't ship Windows, and stole OS/2's next version and mated it with Windows APIs to produce NT. Slimy, yes. Apple, on the other hand, wants it to be illegal to offer products that compete with theirs. The tech industry often looks the other way.

Marine1: Now, show me a time where Microsoft attempted (and in some courts succeeded) in banning any and all of their competitors' products from even being sold in major affluent Western markets.

DR-DOS. In fact, pick an OS. You couldn't bundle it with your machines if you sold even a single range with Windows on it. So.. mid to late 90's. You did ask for a time when Microsoft did it, you didn't stipulate it had to be them doing it through the courts.

Marine1: products potentially banned in Netherlands at Apple's request (new window)

Apple denied ban of Samsung products in the United States (new window)

iOS vs TouchWiz for the most part.

Marine1: Apple sues HTC over 20 different patents in Android devices, asks for permanent injunction against HTC (new window)

Here's the breakdown of those patents in to English, same site as you linked to. Patent to English (new window) having played with SenseUI, yes, it does indeed infringe on some of those patents as far as the eye can tell (slide to unlock, self arranging menu, etc).

Which is the thing to remember, most of this isn't them going for Android directly, a lot of it is about the UI's people have been slapping on their devices. The media just likes simplyfying that as "Android" to get the fanboi's frothing at the gash.

I'm still not seeing the full fat flavoursome Evil at Microsoft levels here. Just some diet evil... maybe evil lite, can't tell from the smell alone.

The future for adaptive streaming video is moving towards using HTTP for transport due to the friendliness with proxies and firewalls. Doesn't address the codec issue. Adobe's HTTP Dynamic Streaming(HDS), Apple's HTTP Live Streaming(HLS), and now MPEG is finalizing DASH which Netflix has shown interest in moving to if DRM is implemented effectively.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2374694,00.asp

sarah_t_s: Marine1: Apple is straight out suing people for producing competing products while they themselves have 90% market share.

You mean jacking up the renewal prices on the ROM licenses so the clone makers would have to stop? Because beyond that you'd have a hardware company, telling itself it had to use it's own product otherwise it's product would be raised in price and they'd be put out of business.

If Apple become a monopoly in the slate market space I have no problems with that. I had no problems with Microsoft being a monopoly in the Desktop space. It's what they did when they got there that's the problem and the same applies with Apple.

Speaking of which, you do love to throw around the iOS v TouchWiz thing. Perhaps you should look at the specific version of TouchWiz that Apple has issues with... it's pretty much a clone of iOS in terms of look n' feel. But hey, I'm sure if I cloned Windows XP's interface, your sainted Microsoft would be just okedokey about that wouldn't they? No. They'd sue me back in to the dark ages and rightly so!

Well, there's the TouchWiz thing (which I admit, Apple might have a legit case on), and then there's the other things they're suing over, namely, the plain look of the body of the tablets/phones themselves. HTC was sued in 2009, and Sense doesn't bear a resemblance to iOS.

It's not just Sammy or HTC they're going after. Ever heard of NK-T? Most people outside of Spain haven't, because they're a small-time maker of cheap 7-inch tablets loaded with seemingly vanilla Android- no TouchWiz. Apple's lawyers have, though. In 2010, they tried to sue the company out of the tablet market in Spain based on patent complaints. There's more to it at the link below, but point being, Apple's suits against Android OEMs aren't truly for mimicking iOS's interface. NK-T's lone offering shares nothing in common with it. The suits are really there to force anyone else out of the market and get consumers to pay the... what, $600?... for an iPad, regardless of whether they want the capabilities of a $600 tablet or not.

Marine1: though their recent actions put Microsoft's bully days to shame.

Only in, judging from this thread, your dreams.

sarah_t_s: Marine1: though their recent actions put Microsoft's bully days to shame.

Only in, judging from this thread, your dreams.

Read my last post. Trust me, Apple's not just suing over TouchWiz. You'd have to be "daft as a brush" (or whatever you Brits say) to believe so if you look at the evidence.

Marine1: Ever heard of NK-T?

Nope.

I have heard of Kunekt though, makers of the Krush 7" tablet.

So what you are, in essence, saying is this:

"How dare Apple make use of legal means to enforce it's patent portfolio around the globe!" why do you have a problem with them doing that? If you have a problem with IP/(C) laws then that is a different matter and one I would agree with you on.

Microsoft's actions were found to be breaking the law. Apple's actions are using (possibly abusing) the law but are well inside of it. I think it's very much letter vs spirit of such laws but until someone decides to make these things sensible there isn't a lot that can be done about it.

Marine1: You'd have to be "daft as a brush" (or whatever you Brits say) to believe so if you look at the evidence.

And you'd have to be as mad as a March hare to not realise there is a slightly different scale between what one company got up to (and still tries to when it thinks nobody is looking) and what the other company IS getting up to.