I must apologize... 10101

We don't know what would have happened had BeOS achieved some exposure in the consumer desktop market. Even 0.001% of the market would have kept them afloat.

Be were working with Hitachi, not Microsoft. Microsoft was a third party company that should have been pleased their OS was selected by Hitachi.

What's it got to do with Microsoft? Nothing. It was Hitachi that were selling hardware,

What gives Microsoft the right to dictate to Hitachi, or anyone else, what they (Hitachi) install on their machines?

Incompetent, irrelevent and immaterial.

Where's the equivalent of Hitachi in your analogy?

So you're quite happy with the concept of a Microsoft only world, where the use of alternative OSs is economically outlawed?

Microsoft leant on Dell for selling Linux only machines.

Microsoft leant on Vobis for installing DR-DOS on their machines

Microsoft leant on Dell for selling Linux only machines.

Microsoft leant on Vobis for installing DR-DOS on their machines

It's entirely unreasonable for a monopoly to perpetuate their monopoly in this manner.

Microsoft do.

But that analogy's just silly. Nobody's asking for Microsoft to change their product, not in this context anyway, just their business methods.

In the closed Stalinist world that Microsoft would like to achieve maybe their 'branding' would be sacrosanct, but in a compebreastive consumer society lots of things are outwith the control of manufacturers.

--

Peter