M$ is banking on the fact that most users aren't tech savie enough or know enough of the legal terms in their EULA... Sort of like Sony and the Root Kit fiasco. The common desk jockey had no idea what the big deal was, or why the root kit fiasco was such a big deal... Sony was just protecting them, right? Right?! Not exactly the same thing here, but close enough to make a point. The common person is going to think M$ is just looking out for them, and wont know that they are being screwed.

I'd also like to address a few myths here... Macs actually have more software now than Windows. Since the move to Intel chips, Macs can now run ALL software. They can run OSX and Windows at the same time, easily switched between the two by tapping the side of the screen. OSX can also compile any and all intel based nix apps and run them. The Mac can run Windows Vista, and can actually do it better than most comparibly configured machines, faster and more stable. The freedom to switch between the two OSes at the same time with no rebooting means that you can freely use both environments with no time lost switching or rebooting, meaning you can code for both nix based systems and windows based systems at the same time, or any number of other apps where you need to split your time between the two. Windows does not yet have this feature, and probably never will. M$ is deathly afraid of the open source movement, it is destroying M$ and their business model, because you can not compete with FREE. More and more people are actually buying Macs now to run Vista on, or even previous versions of Windows, simply for the stability that the Mac hardware offers, and the value of being able to run a system that runs both environs.

As for the market share myth and the whole 5% thing, bollocks. Those are sales of new machines. Many Mac sales are actually used, for better value. Macs don't need replacing as often. The fact that there are 10 and 15 year old Macs out there still doing their jobs as web servers or in rendering farms, or any number of other tasks, still chugging away with out fail speaks a lot about why not as many Macs are sold. They don't break down as often and have a much longer product life.

As for the reverse engineering claim, that was actually leaked out during the beta. Specifically, the window manager was experiencing the exact same sort of glitch that the window manager in OSX had during the 1.1 release, something that was fixed at a later date. (Jag) The only way to have this specific sort of bug was to have the same sort of flawed coding used in a window manager app. I don't fully understand the technical aspects, but I appreciate the humour involved here, as Windows 1 when it very first came out had the exact same type of issue... They had copied the window manager from a previous Mac system and had the exact same bugs... From a couple of years ago. History repeats it self.

The courts said it best. M$ has not innovated one single thing... Ever. Nothing they have created is actually their own. They either buy up emerging technology or steal it outright, and with Vista, it will be much easier for them to steal from emerging technology because they will have express rights to any medium created on their OS platform. The solution of course is to move your coding to open source or to another OS, which people will be doing in droves.