***I blogged this on http://buzz.hi.org.au in June 2008... still relevant, methinks, with Win7 around the corner***
Microsoft is a friendly company. They have lots of friends. Are you one of their friends? There's about a 1 in 50 chance of you saying no to that; Microsoft doesn't care if you said no because if you are not it's friend yet then you are just a friend it hasn't met yet.
Microsoft is also friends with the guys that make computers. No, Microsoft doesn't make computers. People like Acer and IBM and Dell and pimply old fat guys living in their mothers basements make computers. Microsoft is good at marketing. Computers, not so much.
Anyhoo, Microsoft has these friends who make computers. The people who make computers also have friends; the guys who make graphics cards and cpus and modems and psus and laser mice and hard drives and ram and all of that stuff. Which I guess means that the people who make computers don't actually make computers, they just put stuff in boxes.
Anyhoo, all of these guys are friends. And friends like to help eachother out. See, the computer people help microsoft out by making sure all of their computers are sold with windows. Microsoft helps the computer guys out by giving them a lot of money. Microsoft helps the computer people out by releasing a system that needs at least 512mb of ram to type a report. The computer people help microsoft out by selling this system even though it doesn't work yet and every other OS on the market is way better.
That's what friends do; they help eachother out.
Microsoft has a lot of shareholders. It is friends with them too. They are the sort of friends who get nervous when a company isn't releasing new stuff, even though it doesn't need to. So Microsoft helps them out by releasing stuff that nobody needs.
Microsoft doesn't screw its friends. Thats just wrong. Its like terrorism or wasting water. Its just not good for anyone.
Of course, all this friendliness isn't cheap. Friendliness costs billions and billions of dollars. Luckily, Microsoft has billions of friends to sell its stuff to. You are one of those friends.
Now you see, microsoft HAS to sell this stuff, or it will be screwing its friends. And if less people by the stuff, the worse it is for those friends. If YOU don't buy it, you are screwing billions and billions of your friends.
The wow starts now, friend.
