It is very relevant. Can you tell why the EU requires Windows to display a browser selection box on first boot to Europeans, but is okay with iOS totally BANNING the use of non-Safari browser engines?
I'm not European, so I'm not very well informed on their approach to antitrust issues, but my guess would be that either they just haven't gotten enough complaints about/gotten around to prosecuting Apple, or Apple's lack of a monopoly in their respective market gives them greater leeway.
I could imagine them saying, "It's not the processor that's relevant. It's whether something can be classified as a computer or an appliance." Would you say that a Linux- or BeOS- or OS/2-based PC should be treated differently from the same PC running Windows, just because it can't run "x86" [Windows] apps?
Why is it not anti-competitive for Apple to ship their hardware with a completely locked bootloader? Can Microsoft claim they're being anti-competitively blocked for shipping an OS for the iPad? How is it legal for the Kindle Fire and Nook to ship with locked bootloaders?
So far the phone/"giant phone" tablet and netbook/tablet PC/desktop markets have been treated differently. With traditional forms of computing, there is a greater expectation of flexibility of the system. Maybe that will change to the point where consumers expect to be able to install their own OS on a smartphone as well, and I for one hope it does.
Similarly, Microsoft should be allowed to sell the software they create on their own terms.
I agree, so long as those terms don't include explicit or de facto exclusions of their competitors from the market. What we're discussing now is exactly such an exclusion.
No cost to duplicate doesn't mean there was no cost to create it. Or do you propose that the first copy cost $5 billion and then the rest are freely reproduced and distributed?
I'm fully aware of the separate costs of creation versus distribution. I am a hardware/software startup founder myself. My point is that Microsoft needs to figure out how to make money without anticompetitively excluding others from the market. Their decision to sell anything below their actual costs is simply not my problem as a consumer, nor should it be any government's problem.
I'm not European, so I'm not very well informed on their approach to antitrust issues, but my guess would be that either they just haven't gotten enough complaints about/gotten around to prosecuting Apple, or Apple's lack of a monopoly in their respective market gives them greater leeway.
I could imagine them saying, "It's not the processor that's relevant. It's whether something can be classified as a computer or an appliance." Would you say that a Linux- or BeOS- or OS/2-based PC should be treated differently from the same PC running Windows, just because it can't run "x86" [Windows] apps?
Why is it not anti-competitive for Apple to ship their hardware with a completely locked bootloader? Can Microsoft claim they're being anti-competitively blocked for shipping an OS for the iPad? How is it legal for the Kindle Fire and Nook to ship with locked bootloaders?
So far the phone/"giant phone" tablet and netbook/tablet PC/desktop markets have been treated differently. With traditional forms of computing, there is a greater expectation of flexibility of the system. Maybe that will change to the point where consumers expect to be able to install their own OS on a smartphone as well, and I for one hope it does.
Similarly, Microsoft should be allowed to sell the software they create on their own terms.
I agree, so long as those terms don't include explicit or de facto exclusions of their competitors from the market. What we're discussing now is exactly such an exclusion.
No cost to duplicate doesn't mean there was no cost to create it. Or do you propose that the first copy cost $5 billion and then the rest are freely reproduced and distributed?
I'm fully aware of the separate costs of creation versus distribution. I am a hardware/software startup founder myself. My point is that Microsoft needs to figure out how to make money without anticompetitively excluding others from the market. Their decision to sell anything below their actual costs is simply not my problem as a consumer, nor should it be any government's problem.