Yes. As part of the deal Apple was required to include Internet Explorer on Macs (for some amount of time). IE 5 and 5.5 on the Mac were actually very good browsers.
But Apple was not prohibited from including other browsers as well. For example, years later, Safari.
In any event it was state intervention. When that happens the victory/defeat of a company becomes political , not technical or due to financial or business acumen.
The worst thing is that the majority of the American population would have not found themselves competing against Bill Gates for anything, except those in DC who had him as their #1 enemy in order to win their size measuring contest.
Matter of fact the small individual consumer and small businesses were getting away robbing Microsoft blind as they didn't do anything to stop piracy.
Microsoft would just treat it as free marketing or just pass those losses onto big paying customers such as the Fortune 500 companies, thus compensating for piracy losses at the base of the pyramid.
After DOJ intervention nowadays we have Apple shipping a 1700$ phone which is completely closed off and out of the box is impossible to charge while listening to music at the same time. Irony if you think about how passionate Jobs was about music
> In any event it was state intervention. When that happens the victory/defeat of a company becomes political , not technical or due to financial or business acumen.
Microsoft didn't win on technical merit, they were winning because they were aggressively anti-competitive.
Give away your product for free. Now it’s practically impossible for your competitors to sell enough to keep going when there’s a free product out there.
Anti trust laws were made to protect consumers, not paper-millionaires shareholders of other compenies.
There wasn't an organic hatred against Microsoft, people were teaching courses on how to create a startup aimed at getting acquired by them and retire early.
It was a DC play from people who knew nothing about software but were jelous of what they were reading on Fortune and Forbes.
> Anti trust laws were made to protect consumers, not paper-millionaires shareholders of other compenies.
And consumers were harmed by one company controlling 97% of the desktop market, when its would-have-been competitors had better product but couldn't compete because it cheated.
> And consumers were harmed by one company controlling 97% of the desktop market
When the 97% is potentially all free, then I don't where's the monopoly, unless you also include in the definition of monopoly having a special place in people's hearts after you gave them such gift.
People made a choice to pay for convenience, but if you looked around you'd find ways to get Microsoft products for free.
But it’s NOT free. You keep repeating that, but I’m not sure why.
Are you saying that because people didn’t have to buy Windows for their computers since it was included?
They paid in directly. You’d buy your computer for $2000 and Microsoft would get $350 (or whatever). Because of the price Microsoft charged, the price of your computer with artificially high. Because of Microsoft agreements with computer makers, you couldn’t choose NOT to buy Windows. So you had to pay the money. Since you had to buy Windows, there was no price competition.
Even after the antitrust settlement this was still a problem. Remember when netbooks were the fad? Well it’s really hard to sell a $500 laptop that’s good if you’re required to pay Microsoft $250 for Windows. That’s why we actually saw ones that shipped with Lenox. In competition, Microsoft released a cut down version of Windows that was limited that they charged less for.
What do you know, competition worked. That couldn’t happen before the settlement.
By choking out your competitors, since the true cost isn't free. For instance, demanding that OEMs only ship Windows, thus cornering the market, while still charging them (what, you really thought MS was giving their OS away for free, just because the OEM didn't show you the line item?).
> After DOJ intervention nowadays we have Apple shipping a 1700$ phone which is completely closed off and out of the box is impossible to charge while listening to music at the same time.
Even the base model iPhone SE ($399) has an external speaker, bluetooth, and airplay, all of which are capable of playing music while charging at the same time.
What a strange complaint to make, and it’s even stranger to tie it to your even stranger take on the DOJ and Microsoft.
> What a strange complaint to make, and it’s even stranger to tie it to your even stranger take on the DOJ and Microsoft.
Had the DOJ not attacked Microsoft we'd have a better, more open phone which would also come out of the box with the ability to play music while charging.
iPhones made in 2012 were only barely better than Pocket PCs made in 2005
Had the DOJ not attacked Microsoft, we would have had a more open future? That's... let's just call that a minority opinion, unsupported by the available evidence.
I used it. Everything from the original version that came on little tiny palmtops (Windows CE) to the near final version on things like the compact iPaq.
As a geek I found it interesting, but realistically it sucked.
It was eventually available on some of the early smart phones. It had its chance. It failed. Microsoft kept reinventing it trying to fix it, and it never worked. People preferred the “inferior“ PalmOS.
There’s a reason the iPhone came in and ate everyone’s lunch.
Microsoft had a chance. They were competing. They made changes. They rewrote the UI numerous times. They lost. BAD.
The idea that the Pocket PC was better than the iPhone is demonstrably, by sales, wrong.
The idea that the Pocket PC failed somehow because of the Microsoft antitrust settlement with the government… I don’t understand that one.
> That you continue to repeat this, despite it being clearly disproven above, is telling.
Where are the airpods? Not even the last model, even 2017 Airpods.. you know just to provide some aftercare to the customer after screwing them so badly
“Better” is definitely relative to your needs. For most consumers, iPhones in 2007 were easier to use, with a responsive touch interface and (for the time) huge screen.
What exactly are you talking about? My iPhone 13 is simultaneously charging and playing music right this second - while writing this post. Do at least try to keep things rooted in fact, despite your emotions.
I think there's a point there about what comes in the box. If this is your first iPhone, your first Bluetooth-capable device, yes, you're stuck with awkward compromises without spending more money.
Still, for most people it's not their first such device, so they already typically have their own infrastructure of chargers and BT headsets etc.
Apple has certainly slimmed down what comes with an iPhone, but from the cheapest single port iPhone to the most expensive, they all can charge and play music at the same time without spending or acquiring anything else.
