When every implementation in wide use has their own quirks, you must support them all to make your program widely used. Every special case is yet another potential bug to chase down.
It also allows "Embrace, extend, and extinguish" -strategy that Microsoft used so successfully to assfuck the internet over a decade.
Younger people don't know how absolutely ruthless and harmful Wintel monopoly was under Gates. Java did not work on purpose. Javascript did not work for purpose.
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They attempted to kill open web in the crib with their blackbird project. Only MSN (The Microsoft Network) for normal people.
You (the generic "you") can complain all you want about Apple today, but you have another perfectly viable option. And Apple is (almost-entirely) happy to grow market share on merits without salting the earth of any rivals.
In Microsoft's heyday, that was not true. Those of us who rejected MS back then did so at a much higher cost than green chat bubbles.
It was worth it though. And we did win, eventually.
Windows was never going to scale down to the portable devices that we now use (because defeating Apple would have been very difficult, and AOSP made it insurmountable).
Windows was never going to scale up to the top 500 supercomputer list (for largely economic reasons).
Microsoft itself has tacitly admitted that Azure is better served by Linux, and we ponder why.
Did the DoJ actions against Microsoft really have an impact? I don't know.
Microsoft embodied the adage "It's not enough to win. Everyone else must lose."
Many of them people that used to complain about Micro$oft and should know better.
https://www.justice.gov/atr/us-v-microsoft-proposed-findings...
See 91.3.2
- Active X.
- VB6, OLE, VBA macros and friends.
Merge both. Now you have a propietary hell full of vulnerabilities.
Said this, I don't like Google's world dominance on the smartphones/web/email/chat/maps/video platforms, neither.
*Apple it's just sucessful in the US.