[dayglored]

> The claim is that Microsoft has lots of APIs that nobody else knows about. Thus their products can use the APIs to get better functionality than the competition.

Ah, yes... "DOS ain't done until Lotus won't run." The SOBs never change.

Nor do their apologists. ;-)

Of course, they're increasingly subtle about it these days. Microsoft's compatibility testing is legendary, and deserves praise, Vista notwithstanding.

OTOH, it's perfectly clear that WHEN THEY WANT TO DO SO, they cut the competition off at the knees using their proprietary secret advantage.

[antiRepublicrat]

Microsoft's compatibility testing is legendary, and deserves praise, Vista notwithstanding.

I remember when NT code was leaked. People who reviewed it said it was full of application-specific hacks. Good that they do this for compatibility, bad that they do it for stability and clean code. But they were in a corner -- if an app didn't work, people blamed the OS instead of the app. Unfortunately the solution was a PR one, not a technical one.

But I do remember something about the early days of the browser wars, where Microsoft shipped a modified DLL with a version of IE that was also required by Netscape, and the new DLL broke Netscape.