Originally posted by ewinemiller
I don't really see the difference between bundle and integrate in this context. When I first boot up my new Mac or PC there a shortcuts. On the PC one is IE, on the Mac one is iTunes, as a consumer I don't have a choice to remove either of those before I boot up my machine. You are right, in the case of iTunes I can delete the whole app and install a 3rd party application to do the same thing. In the case of IE I can delete the shortcut and install a 3rd party app to do the same thing, IE will simply be in the background providing the services it supplies for the OS, but in no way impacting my user experience with the new 3rd party application. In both cases the problem for the 3rd party vendor is not that anything is integrated, but that it is bundled. With both those applications, my motivation for buying a 3rd party application is virtually nothing. iTunes is very cool, for my use I don't need to replace it. Likewise IE works very well and I am not motivated to replace it either, so the 3rd party vendor loses. So if IE is integrated (as opposed to bundled), but I can delete the shortcut and install Netscape never seeing IE again (as a browser), who cares?
The end result is still the same, I select a file or folder, click the delete menu, install my 3rd party app, and go on my merry way. Yes if IE was bundled (instead of integrated), it could be removed however, MS would still have to find another tool to do the things IE is doing for it now (help, explorer), that would mean that you still would have something integrated into the OS you couldn't remove even if it wasn't as blatent.
I agree that the HW manufacturers should probably be allowed to modify the MS configuration as much as they want, assuming the HW manufacturer then takes on the support role. If Dell wants to make Netscape the default browser, they should be able to, and nothing in the IE integration with Windows prevents that. Forcing MS to reengineer the components that use IE as a tool is lawyers making technical decisions for a company and that's wrong. Nobody is asking Apple to make Finder a removable component why should MS have to remove the technology they use in Explorer.
As for IE and standards, I'm using a SOAP, XML, and XSL. What other standards have been proposed lately? MS does tend to jump the gun and push out "preapproved" standards and then switches to the standard when it is approved at the next release. I have been bite by that one before, but that is the price you pay for coding to an "unapproved" standard.