I agree, its likely to be more subtle than that. I'm sure most software producers have an eye on selling software for the corporate desktop or home users and in both of those markets Microsoft still has what, 95% of the market? So they decide that employing the expertise required to develop cross platform is not worth it. And as a business you can see their case.

What you have to ask yourself is why is the market so tightly sown up by Microsoft in the first place. Is the answer that their product is so superior that non-other has ever really competed?

And when you've finished laughing, consider the question, is it that Microsoft bribed PC suppliers to not ship other developers software? Is bribe even the right word?

MS had a decent enough product in MS-DOS even if it was a virtual rip-off of DR-DOS. They had a reasonable market share at the time, I remember about 50% of the PC's I was building got sold with MS-DOS because that's what that group of customers wanted. The rest were DR-DOS or a flavour of Unix that I forget at present. Then Microsoft said if you don't stop shipping our competitors products we won't provide you with MS-DOS. So what are you going to do as a PC supplier, lose 50% of your business to a competitor who complies? Or do your best to pursuade the 30% of your customers who buy DR-DOS to change and take the hit on the ones that don't? Does that not amount to extortion?

It almost has to be illegal anyway.

Is it that they then started buying out potential competition and absorbing their ideas, like the Borg? They threatened smaller competitors with copyright lawsuits that the competitors simply could not afford to fight, etc etc etc.

So is that why Microsoft has market domination? In my opinion, and I've been working in this field for 20 odd years, yes it is. Plus the fact that most people are creatures of habit. Eventually the terms PC and Windows became synonymous, like the brits call vacuum cleaners "Hoovers" due to the fact that for a long while Hoover made the most popular vacuum cleaners in this country. I'm often asked by people to fix their "WindowsPC" almost as one word.

Companies primarily develop for Windows because it has the lions share of the corporate and home user desktop. It has this because it behaved in an immoral and sometimes illegal fashion until it became the only game in town. It maintained this situation until people even forgot that there was another game. Once that happened any need for Microsoft to pay any attention to the quality of their software went out of the windows (pun intended).

Which is where we are now. People put up with an unstable, bloated, slow, insecure, supposedly multitasking* operating system where bugs remain outstanding for years, and they do it partly because they are unaware of having any choice, partly out of fear of change, partly because their choices as explained to them in the media are - you can have a Windows PC or an Apple MAC. They may occasionally mention that there is this weird, difficult to understand, non-hardware supporting, command line driven thing that hackers use but my golly we don't want anything to do with naughty people like that do we?

This is a situation that MS has carefully engineered over decades and its just the way MS want to keep it. Hence the continued dance along the fine line between immorality and illegality, the bullying via bogus patent and copyright lawsuits, the propaganda campaigns in the media, the presence of what must be Microsoft employee's in forums where Windows is regularly slated. And if you think that's paranoid, get real. How many users are there on this board? 460 Thousand!. Most of whom are at least semi technical or they wouldn't be here, and even semi-technical people get asked for advice by non-techies. That's a lot of exposure.

Windows is rubbish because Microsoft don't have to bother, because they are an effective monopoly, a position achieved through dodgy business practices.

Anyway, I apologise for the essay, someone obviously pushed one of my buttons. Anyone got soapbox?


* Try running Outlook on a slow network and watch as your fire breathing, hyper-threaded, ram stuffed, 8-core beast with its multi-tasking operating system grinds to halt.

+1 totally BUT what is M$ REAL market share (they only use # of licenses sold and ignore how many people have dropped windoze for alternative OSs)

Off topic, but a very wise person said:

Well, yeah, that's the obvious excuse... but it's a trap and not cost effective in the long run. But, I agree with the rest of your points.

Un-F'ing-Believable. I never noticed this post until today. You're replies are so flawed and blindly arrogant that I don't know where to begin to make fun of you... but I'll try.

Total hogwash. This isn't political campaigning (unless you see it that way). We are talking about technical facts and reviewing technology. Jesus Christ dude, are you seriously trying to tell us that we should not discuss the merits and failures of technology products??? You really must think people are dumb. Either that or you your messages are only meant for the dumb people.

I'm not going to waste time picking apart the rest of it as I am tempted to think you are just joking... you must be. <shaking head>

This is just too easy...

First you say,

Then, your very next sentence is,

This clearly reveals a total absence of experience of even cursory knowledge of system calls or even how native programming works. Tell me, just how do you think those 3rd party tools get a list of PID's with certain file handles open? Magic? No, they use the same system calls that the OS provides in the first place. DUDE! LOL

I'd suggest to grow up a bit - nobody likes fanatics. Also I though that this forum had 13 y/o age limit.

DeleteFile documentation is avialable on msdn. Check the type of return code and think really, really hard. "Enumerate open files for process" example available here. Check it out, and think really, really hard. Keep doing it for a few years and perhaps eventually you'll understand the problem.

Regarding you "why windows doesn't....": send all your complaints to technical support.

Dude, do you have any friends? You respond with grow-up and name-calling? You're a real piece of work. You make nonsensical proclamations and can't even back them up technically. Nothing I said is fanatical. I'm trying to get you to use your head.

I guess I'll have to spell it out for you. Windows CAN provide the same functionality that 3rd party tools provide to identify which process has a given file open. You said absolutely they cannot, but 3rd party tools CAN. The OS provides the 3rd party tools the system calls to allow said functionality. The OS can use those same calls. It's very simple to grasp. This is basic OS fundamentals.

deleted

Oh brother. I quoted you and your quote is staring you straight in the face, yet you deny it. NO, you were not talking about a "specific" API call. You were GENERALIZING about "standard" file manipulation APIs (whatever "standard" means on Windows):

So. Who cares. You wouldn't use the same function call to get a list of open file handles as you would to move or delete a file. Why would you even think that??? So, you think that it's somehow impossible to get the job done if the API you use to delete a file doesn't also return a list of processes that might have the file open? That's pretty lazy dude. No, you have to use other apis and most likely write another function for that... along with some control statements... it's called PROGRAMMING, shees.

The point is that you go to lengths to defend Microsoft and Windows by trying to prove me wrong without thinking about what you are saying... unless you ARE thinking, which would be scary. You have to pick your battles man. So far, you've been no challenge whatsoever and have only embarrassed yourself immensely.

Too late. I quote you above.

win32api file handling routines: File Management Functions
Have a look at them. SigTerms statement was totally true.
You seem to think that discussions in this forums are "won" by the one who has the last word. This is a somewhat technical forum, so if you want to argue bring in a technical proof. I haven't seen any proof of what you were saying in any thread of you I have seen til now, yet you are demanding these from others.
Just pointless.
Have a nice day.

Tobi, SigTerm's shadow, you and sigterm are using the strawman argument. I never said nor implied the silly assertion that he is asserting; that the functionality needs to be implemented in a single API call. That's retarded. Compounding that fallacy is his own failure to speak the truth. His own reference provides an example of an API to provide said functionality (as if it needed to be shown; existing 3rd-party tools were sufficient evidence of the function's existence which was never in doubt in the first place). If he ever responded this way to his boss, assuming he has a job, it would severely affect his job security... and you as well for backing him up.

It's real simple, Windows CAN notify the user which process has a lock on a file. SysInternals HandleEx and ProcessExplorer do it and they use the Windows API. Windows can use it's own api... duh. SigTerm responds by saying that it's not Windows' job to provide that functionality to the user, like we're living in some sort of Microsoft Orwellian dictatorship and we should just be grateful for whatever functionality we do have. That's a very strange perspective.

Then, he says,
That's flatly wrong. If he mistyped that statement, well, then it then because an irrelevant statement.

SigTerm labels me a Unix fanatic, but he is evidently opposed to any improvement or enhancement of Windows whatsoever. He's so sensitive to the slightest criticism that he rejects any reasonable suggestion for improvement. But, I guess Windows is just perfect as it is. Yeah, if you live in Oceania.

Put down the Kook-Aid boys/girls.

When you consider how much money it costs to train one individual, and you consider how much it costs to staff a helpdesk, and you consider how many calls a helpdesk ordinarily receives on absolutely bone-headed user mistakes with software most people are already familiar with, and you consider how many dollars that costs an organization in lost productivity... "excuse" doesn't enter into it. These are real dollars we're talking about.

If you think it can be done, then make it happen.
Hack explorer.exe, add needed functionality, then sumbit the file back to microsoft, along with the source code. Repeat with every complaint you have.

Most people are trained in school, so the cost would be the same; just swap out Windows for Unix.

should be less requirement for a helpdesk since Unix is more stable.

Over time, since users aren't using an OS meant for dumb people, the users would be more intelligent and would call with less bone-headed questions.

Your double-dipping. Cost in lost productivity is included in the original cost. And I reiterate, Unix allows one, if trained, to be more productive.

I am talking about real dollars.

I believe it is FUD that keeps companies from making the switch. But, the easiest solution is to just start with education. Unfortunately, industry influences the curriculum to some extent.