"Thanks for the history lesson, but it doesn't backup your statement that everybody uses Windows because 'everybody uses Windows'. Obviously there's not an objective bone in your body"

If you don't accept the arguments of natural monopoly based on software compatibility, and use in the workplace due to compatibility and control, thats your prerogative, but objectivity is a goal here.

"'Microsoft has always been a "Me-too" player...' FYI, That's complete and utter bullshit."

Mouse wheel : did Microsoft invent that? I'm curious to know more about the history of it. XBox : in a classic "me-too" move, they use tons of money to break in to a market with a weak product and huge marketing. Somehow, they managed to make a great team out of that and turn around a solid second generation product, so I agree that the XBox team is now innovative. LINQ : have you heard of Rails? Languages that aren't statically typed (I hear lisp is popular around here)? LINQ is nifty if you are a .Net developer, thats where it ends.

It's interesting that you bring up Windows 95 as an argument for Microsoft's innovation, since it was basically a Windows 3.1 compatible copy of Apple's System 7. Yes, lots of people lined up to get Windows 95. Yes, it was a huge improvement over Windows 3.1, and worth the money. No, it was not successful because it was better than the competition. Even worse than their blatant feature copying was the twist they put on things to make them seam original. The "Recycling Bin"? Why is the system menu called "Start"? Why are there menu bars on each window, moving all over the place and being generally harder to click on? [ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts_law ]

"Where did you get all of this stuff about people controlling other people? You are starting to sound like a crack pot conspiracy theorist."

Thank you? What exactly is a "conspiracy theorist"? I suspect that you're going to tell me that its someone who dislikes the government, but what you mean is someone who has wild ideas that don't deserve attention. If you can't see the desire for control as an inherent human trait, you should really try thinking a bit more, maybe reading a book (history if possible). Anyway, control is a huge selling point of Windows. My mom has a work issued laptop that's been configured to disallow her from changing the wireless network settings to join a wireless network. That's pretty controlling in my opinion.

"Vista Media Center pretty much kicks the ass of XP Media Center"

Thats a great point, and one that Apple sometimes uses as well. It turns out that 10.5 really didn't have a lot of good features that would make everyone want to upgrade, so they added a bunch of developer frameworks that they wouldn't package for 10.4. Why should I buy a new operating system for the Media Center? In Microsoft's "Mojave" commercials they have people talk about how they like the photo stiching software. These are not OS level features, and the only reason that they don't run on XP is because Microsoft keeps them as cheese to encourage people to upgrade the entire OS. Why not sell Vista Media Center as an XP application? The bundling mindset is so engrained in our thinking that its largely invisible.

"Gee, steal lines from Apple much? Exactly what bugs are you talking about? Can you even think of one?"

Personally, I would like to see them finally solve DLL conflicts. Shared library support is a non-issue on linux and Mac, but the best solution on Windows is to pay for a capable enough version of Visual Studio to statically link OS libraries (thus defeating the point of shared libraries). Last time that I used vista there were still lots of video driver issues, and I had problems with unpredictable behavior differences between XP and Vista.

Here's the real kicker tho: they ran an entire ad campaign where they fooled people into thinking that their product was something else, and then surprising them. This is analogous to letting someone drive a mystery car around an autocross track and then telling them that its a really a Pinto (see? It was plenty powerful in this parking lot! Now don't get in any accidents!). You can be certain that they cherry picked the hardware, specifically scripted the experience to avoid any known issues, and only showcased the people who were happy.

"There's nothing wrong with failure."

This we can agree on. Without allowing for failure, we cannot succeed.