Stardate 20010824.0750 (On Screen): Win XP shipped to PC makers today. It's quite clear that Mcrosoft made a forced march to get it out the door before there could be any resolution in the antitrust suit, probably so as to make its feature set a
fait accompli. I confess that I don't fully understand why, though. I know that there were murmerings that the feature set of XP should be one of the things considered, but it's not necessarily the case that this can't be done anyway. After all, Microsoft was originally ordered to make changes in its shipping OS, way back when. (They complied but the order was then overturned on appeal.) So what is to be gained by getting XP out the door so rapidly? The only answer I can come up with is that the actual fact of getting XP out
is the goal. It's not the feature set it contains, it's that Microsoft was afraid that shipment of XP might have been delayed by months during the legal wrangling. Now the wrangling will take place while XP continues to ship, so Microsoft won't be deprived of the revenue stream while the lawyers argue.
(discuss)
