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Comment by cooldeal | Hacker News Reader

How is this remotely related to antitrust(any more than the iPad i.e) ?

Desktop Windows gains it's monopoly leverage from running Win 32 apps and people are forced to run it for compatibility. None of those programs will ever run on Windows RT. Windows RT is basiscally starting from zero, just like the iPad did.

Just because it has Windows in it's name does not mean it's subject to antitrust. What next? Insinuating that Windows Phone should be subject to anti-trust restrictions that the iPhone or Android is not?

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Um, there's going to be Office for Windows RT. That's certainly leveraging one of Microsoft's monopolies.

That seems to be quite a stretch.

MS is rumored to be working on Office for the iPad. If that's true then will it get them off the hook?

Offering Office on other platforms doesn't mean they're not leveraging it. After all, which platform is it going to work best on?

I don't see how leveraging Office is illegal or can be considered abuse.

In that case, they should already be on the dock for not having a Office for Linux, yet I don't even see anyone making that claim.

Microsoft still has a business software monopoly with Office on the desktop. Using that monopoly to privilege their tablet platform over other tablet platforms (e.g. via better interoperability) can easily be an antitrust issue (depending on what they specifically do, of course).

This is ridiculous. Of course I hope it is going to work best on the MS Tablet. Why not? It'd be a fail if it wouldn't work best on their own OS. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with that, in fact, it is called decent engineering. And if e.g. Apple does not want to provide the same access to iOS as MS has to Windows, it will not work as slick.

Also, I heared Apple is leveraging Safari on iOS, where is the law?

The difference between Office and Safari is Microsoft has a monopoly with Office and Apple doesn't with Safari.

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