10 has its stupid quirks, but it isn't going to just decide to cut off important feature updates and hardware support while that hardware is still very much viable based solely on an arbitrary model/firmware revision number and/or whatever brand or category of hardware they care most about in the past 5 minutes. It doesn't force you into some entirely backwards, restrictive, proprietary brand-specific ecosystem in regards to those features, interfaces, file transfers, etc, either. M$ is more like, "Here, take this garbage web browser. We probably made it a little better ... maybe." And you can go, "nah, no thanks." instead of Apple going, "Behold, this is the one true way to do everything ... until it no longer is tomorrow, in which case we'll no longer support that either. Buy our dongles, adapters, and new hardware due to planned obsolescence instead of natural aging and/or preference/need. By all means though, since we don't care about what you value, you can choose to get by with much preferable/more useful hardware that we've kneecapped the software on because you paid us 2-3x its real value too many years ago to satisfy our greed."
I hate M$, I do. I hate Apple so much more. I hate Nintendo for the same reasons that I hate Apple. I also hate Google, but Google at least doesn't seem to care about anything you do with their stuff so long as they can keep selling ever more data en masse.
It's not a fair comparison, Apple is a hardware company, MS is a software company, but you are still very much locked in and they are trying to lock you in further.
Windows RT and Windows 10S were both attempts to lock you into the MS store.
This initiative is not done yet, Win10 is slowly morphing into software as a service (SAS) and you can be darn sure they will continue to push you into vendor lock in through that. What do you think the purpose of pushing online accounts for Windows? It locks you into them, now they have email and OS, and as it pushed further into SAS territory you can renew your Windows license and 365 license all through the store using that online account. By the way, how about a new Surface Tablet, we notices your using an older model.
Did you forget about the forced update to Win10 or how you can no longer install Win7 or 8 on newer motherboards? It works fine, they just don't want you doing it. There was also the fake/cloned Texas Instruments usb2serial chip, MS and T.I. pushed a driver update that locked out any fake chips. Millions of GPS, serial adapters, IOT devices, 3d printers, 2d printers, arduinos, keyboards, vinyl cutters, laser cutters, cnc mills, plasma cutters, all shut down. In many cases companies had bought fake chips unknowingly, sometimes they were even mixed in with real chips, even when bought from authorized distributors. MS and TI both knew exactly what would happen, they just did it anyway. It was only after massive public outcry they reversed this decision and rolled back the driver.
I can give you a huge list of others.
Intel 855 drivers (blocked like Win7 and 8 on newer chips), locking the bios of Surface Rt (to block Linux and ARM development), wifi error code 10 (had this happen within 20 minutes of of the box), but if you want to know what the biggest piece of vendor lock in from MS is, it's not Windows or even gaming (they don't control enough of that), it's MS Office. "But you can get Office on Mac and phones", that's very true, but Windows and Mac exists today because of Office. When Steve Jobs heard Ms was making an OS and threatened to sue, MS simply told him they would stop making Office for Mac, pulling MS Office back then, same as today, would destroy Mac. Office is a big money maker, possibly bigger than Windows itself, almost every office uses it. All MS has to do is pull the plug on the Mac version and overnight Macs users would come running for PCs the next morning, Apple and MS knows this. So why not put it on Linux and really take over? There's talk of it.
Apple considers itself a hardware company (even though most of their profit is through the app store). Microsoft considers itself a software company, give them full control over hardware and yes, they will do the same thing Apple does, they did it to Surface RT. Both companies are equally as predatory they just have different methods of going about it because of their "core businesses" are different. The weird part about how they view themselves is that MS doesn't actually need Windows anymore just as Apple doesn't need Mac or MacOS, I've said it before that I wonder how much longer Mac will be around. They have an IOS based "laptop" and now the computers are switching to ARM, it's not a stretch to see the two merge. Apple says they won't but they also never comment on future products and technologies and they have to say that to protect Mac sales, they'll continue to say that until the moment they decide to pull that plug.
Boy did this go off topic. Sorry, knightjp, I hope you got what you were after.
