>But defending Microsoft (or Blackberry, to take another example)? To me, it seems like being a huge fan of Gap fashion (sorry, for the comparison, Gap). Or Con-Ed.

The problem is that there are lot of technically inclined people who are either not knowledgeable about MS, or are already fans of Apple or Google or other non-MS tech like LAMP, RoR, etc. etc.

For example, lets take the Metro UI in WP7:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1sN2Q6ded8&feature=mfu_i... (short ad)

Longer articles, but with lots of pictures to glance through:
http://www.riagenic.com/archives/487
http://www.riagenic.com/archives/493

Now lets see the iPhone UI elements
http://www.mobileorchard.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/omni...

Android UI elements

http://smokingapples.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/android-...

Which ones look like this from over 20 years ago? http://images.yourdictionary.com/images/computer/_PROGMAN.GI...

Who were you comparing to Gap again? If Metro were made by Apple or Google, people here would fawning all over. A Gruber article about how great and innovative Metro is, compared to all the regular UIs out there which all have UI chrome would get around 400 upvotes since it's a story about Apple disrupting the paradigm. The Windows 8 UI also seems to be ahead of the iPads'. But since it's MS here, we all like to hate on it on tech sites, regardless of actual merits. Was there even an article on HN about the Metro UI that got some traction? Gruber's article about the placement of a chair at a Jobs' keynote gets a few hundred upvotes though.

While stuff like .NET, C#, ASP.NET, SQL Server may not get much traction here, they are quite good and work for a LOT of enterprises. Also, things XBox, Kinect, Windows 8 may not be magical but are still very cool to many many people out there, just not the HN/Slashdot crowd.

As to the comments about biased reporting, what do you think will happen if a big Blackbery sales are down to 0.1%? The reporter made a very silly mistake. First of all, Windows Phones means those with WP7 which is completely different from Windows Mobile(which mostly sucked, btw). The author lumped both together and made a very big WTF stupid mistake and got called out for it. What's wrong with that? The real share of Windows Phone rose from 0 to about 1-2% in 9 months which is pretty respectable for a brand new platform in face of strong competition from Android/iPhone/BB. Nokia is getting on the bandwagon. The headline and the article made it look like WP7 was bleeding marketshare since launch which is okay with you since you don't like MS and so would like unquestioned FUD to be levied against it? The tag line of the article: "Microsoft’s smartphone platform may be irrelevant before Mango update and Nokia devices arrive."Not to mention the fake anti-Vista FUD that was lapped up on Slashdot, http://www.zdnet.com/blog/btl/why-we-dont-trust-devil-mounta...

The problem with that is that the FUD then becomes mantra on tech sites, like the whole "DRM in Vista" FUD backlash. Now see how many commenters and readers here and on other sites take the headline at face value.

You won't see much of that defending on HN because most MS fans have been driven out by the blind hate of MS on here and blind devotion to Google/Apple. You could clearly see the bias here when comment scores were displayed and it still happens with fanboy upvoting/downvoting/lack of voting.This article and your comment here is a good example of that attitude in practice. There will be a LOT of people reflexively upvoting the article since it's anti-MS but god forbid an article about the Metro UI gets on the front page. There is a big section of fanboys/haters and less real geeks on sites like this even though they pride themselves to be very objective. Nothing wrong with that per se, except that it's very imbalanced at this time against Microsoft, that's why you see what you see and need to realize that there's a whole world in tech outside of the HN news and comments feedback loop.

Edit: Thanks for all the downvotes HN. Nothing better than to see your comment grayed out while the parent comment and the following comments are still going strong. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2855328

I get it, I shouldn't be wasting time here on a saturday night. A walk outside instead would've served me better. Maybe paid shills are really required on such sites, it takes a thick skin to waste your time here Maybe should've started with 'I know I will be downvoted..." but then people don't like it because they think such comments are trolling for karma. If they only knew how much traction comments that are almost invisible and lower on the page get. This is like being a Democratic analyst on Fox News with all the anti-MS and pro-Apple/Google bias on here.