Originally posted by avus
Why in the hell does Microsoft have to compete with a standard developed by the company that is only 1/240th of their size?
They are deeply paranoid and passive-aggressive - true signs of Psychos.
The reason is, if you followed their developers conference, you would probably understand.
Remember the cancelation of standalone IE for Windows and Mac? The reason is its being integrated deeply into the OS, so much so, that it cannot be removed without ripping out the .NET framework that is going to be installed by default on windows longscorn.
The reason for the integration is to reel in all those pesky web-based applications that people are using as cross-platform replacements for system installed apps, (like some web office apps etc.) and to tie them to the browser/os combination.
So, in other words, MS is pushing for web-based apps that take advantage of the longhorn API and, of course, only run on longhorn.
If you think its bad today with IE only sites, just wait....
Also, one of the reasons that is thought MS is waiting till 2006 to release LH is so that the Antitrust settlement will expire then, and then they can bundle anything they want to expand their Monopoly...
Anyways, coming back to the flash thing, flash is the most popular plug-in in existence right? So the barrier for the 100% adoption of this new web/integrated OS is that flash is cross-platform, but once flash-type stuff is only working on windows, well, you can guess what happens next (think mass extinction).