It was thanks to the EU regulations on MS. Now that the limits on that had ended MS is sinking to new lows.
So next time an Appleoid tells you how the horrible EU is destroying innovation by asking Apple to use the USB-C connector on its phone that it does on every other device in its lineup, remember MS. (also the fact that if it wasn’t for anti trust actions against MS by the U.S. and the EU Apple almost certainly wouldn’t exist).
Here's John Gruber (who I like a lot, but you know when his Apple blinders are blinding him).
https://daringfireball.net/linked/2021/09/23/eu-usbc-mandate
And now they're complaining about the EU requiring Apple to open up iOS like the Mac, and they are pushing back against that.
It's the regulatory version of how everything sucked until Apple did it (so multi-tasking on phones is awful, until Apple decided that actually now it's ok and now Stage Manager is the best thing since sliced bread).
The people who complained about one thing isn't even necessarily the same group complaining about the other.
You mean just these dark patterns with their browser, right?
I may have written about this a dozen times on HN, but there was a time when Exchange refused to play nice with anything that wasn't an Outlook client. Even nowadays, Outlook doesn't support half a dozen standards that would allow better interoperability with other calendars and clients.
Embrace, extend, extinguish is not something Microsoft has reneged of since the origin of the phrase back in the 90s.