> Microsoft doesn’t make their own hardware and doesn’t even try to set a minimalist standard.
Microsoft does indeed make hardware; granted, not much -- no motherboards, power supplies, and such. They make peripherals (the old MS Mouse was the standard PC mouse for a long time) and a few other side items, some of which are quite good, some of which suck ferociously. Their hardware offerings often become defacto standards.
But more important, Microsoft does indeed set standards for what is a PC for running Windows, at every level of detail from chipsets to commands to available API support. They have done so very clearly and explicitly since the mid-90's. And those standards are the reason that nearly any hardware made today in the PC realm will run Windows. It's not an accident.
Not to mention the Xbox...;) That’s a huge market, they sell around 400,000 Xbox systems a month, leading the entire market.
They do a LOT of other hardware development as well, for other companies to put their labels on. Most of the telecom work I’ve done for Microsoft has worn the labels of other companies, not Microsoft. Microsoft develops the hardware (even the ASICs), the firmware, the ID, the entire system, pays to tool it, selects and qualifies the factory, then turns it over to another company to brand and sell. All using Microsoft OSes and connectivity.
Even though they’ll spend $10 million to make a phone system, they give it away to someone else, because they know - in the long run - they’ll make back ten times that amount in licensing and further lock themselves in as the standard for the industry.
Yes of course I know they make small add on’s. I have a very nice bluetooth Microsoft Mouse. I like it better than the mighty mouse by apple. And because I use both OSX and Windows on my MBPro, it works better when I am in Windows than does the mighty mouse.
As for the basic standards, I am sure you are aware that the bar is not very high at all and many times when a PC is certified to run a newer OS it often fails to actually meet the standard in practice. So, once again, my generalizing seems to be taken a bit too literally. Always remember, this is a comparison, and so when I say it as a definitive, I am still retaining the comparison.
So, Microsoft does not make the hardware which is the PC itself. There is no “Microsoft PC” and the available suppliers of PCs and PC parts are widely varied in their costs, quality and quantities. Which, is the exact opposite of the Apple format. Apple designs and builds their own hardware, many times as in the case of the new CPU chips for the iPad, entirely from scratch by buying a chip making company upfront and just doing it themselves. That alone makes the comparison starkly and radically opposed.
Now, when we come to things like the standards for, in the example you used, chipsets and API calls, your angle actually harms the argument. There are numerous chipsets out there, from new to old to hackable to overclockable and while Microsoft does set “a standard” it is so poor and varied as to likely be the cause of 90% of the hardware and internal peripheral conflicts.
I won’t even bother to chase this one down as it could be a 30 page post all by itself. Northbridge, southbridge, DDR, USB, H264, which CPUs, what Ram, even the BIOS all fall into the chip set configuration. Each chip set has its own code name, and a list of stats for each iteration which take up a page or two in google searches to describe what hardware and software is suited best for which set and known compatibility issues.
You cannot truly call THAT “a standard”. It’s a list. It’s a framework. It might even been a guideline... but a standard is STANDARD. SAME. 75mph speed is a standard. “30mph to 80mph” is a range...
And 30 under X conditions, subject to B circumstances, allowing for C overlap, between Y and Z exchanges, etc etc.... that’s a HEADACHE... not a standard.
My point is, THIS IS THE WORLD Microsoft is STUCK with. They cannot DO anything about it.... NOW. They don’t make the hardware, and they have NO standards. That’s what I said, and comparatively speaking, that is exactly the case for why they cannot “out Apple Apple” and shouldn’t even try.
Now, my last point was there ARE things they CAN and SHOULD do better. And I am ALL FOR IT. I use windows. I want it better. And everyone benefits if they do what they do and do it better than they have been doing it.