You know, with all the hoopla surrounding the ongoing antitrust case against Microsoft, it's easy to lose sight of exactly why the government is taking action against them. One of the fundamental issues at hand is that Microsoft may be using its near-monopoly in the desktop operating system market (Windows hovers at somewhere around 90% market share, by most accounts) to establish a new monopoly in the internet browser market. By tying Internet Explorer to Windows both by including it in the OS distribution and by contractually reuiring all Windows licesnees not to remove it, Microsoft has managed to walk in and take over about half of the browser market. Smart-- and possibly illegal, hence the lawsuits.

But what about the premise of that argument-- that Microsoft even has a monopoly in desktop operating systems in the first place? After all, a monopoly implies that consumers have no choice but to buy from a single supplier. There are certainly plenty of non-Windows operating systems around (Linux, OS/2, BeOS, etc.), even if you choose to buy an Intel-based PC. That's why the report recently filed by UCLA undergrad David Chun is so fascinating; in it, he details how he called a dozen PC manufacturers and found that he was forced to buy Windows if he bought a computer from any of them. Among a group consisting of companies like Gateway, Sony, NEC, Dell, Micron, and more, not a single vendor was willing to sell a PC without Windows preinstalled. When asked why they wouldn't sell a system without Windows pre-loaded, and wouldn't allow the customer to delete Windows upon receipt of the system and then return the Windows license for a refund, about half of the companies explicitly mentioned that they are under contract with Microsoft. (We found the link to David's findings on MacInTouch.)

Interesting, isn't it? While PC purchasers do have the option of running non-Windows operating systems, it seems they still have to pay for Windows anyway. Heck, even IBM, who has their own PC operating system called OS/2, requires that customers pay for Windows even if they opt to purchase OS/2 for their new Aptiva. Why? "That's just the way it is." Read: "It's part of our Windows licensee contract." So it appears that one would have to jump through hoops to buy a PC without buying Windows, either by buying from a small non-Windows-licensed manufacturer, or by building a system from scratch. This little round-headed guy with a top hat and a white mustache comes to mind...

It's almost MacWorld Expo time again... who else is getting excited? Well, judging by the rumors of a smaller show and poor preregistration, we'd have to guess, "not many." We consider that a darn shame; this is the expo's first year in New York, and despite our ambivalence about the move from Boston (now it's actually a trip, which is kind of a pain, but at least we don't have to deal with the Big Dig and buses between two convention halls), we'd like to see it succeed. We're encouraged by MacCentral's preview of the event, though.

MacCentral's Stan Flack spoke to the show's director to shed some light on the attendance issues. Yes, the show will be smaller this year, though there will be roughly the same number of exhibitors as there were at last year's Boston show; with the demise of cloning, though, we won't see the same "Battle of the Big Booths" that we did last year. Apple's booth, however, will be huge, to accommodate all of the gawkers wanting to check out the PowerBook G3 Series and the new iMac, as well as to get the skinny on Mac OS X. And the really compelling thing for us is the renewed focus on Macs in the consumer space, with both a "Content@Home" show section, and an entire section dedicated to games. There's even a two-day gaming competition (though Yours Truly will have to sit this one out, due to the busted paw). All in all, it sounds like this Expo will be both educational and a lot of fun.

By the way, we'd like to publicly thank MacCentral, and especially Stan, for thinking of us when he was asked about finding speakers for one of the conference panels. This will be our fifth MacWorld Expo. but it'll be our first time sitting on one of the panels, and we expect it to be a blast. For those of you who are attending, the conference in question is "101 Things To Do With A Dead Mac." Details are forthcoming, so keep tuning in...

Sounds like the PowerPC chipmaking marriage may be over... IBM and Motorola are splitting up, and Motorola gets the house. IBM is vacating the Somerset PowerPC design center in Texas, leaving the whole place to Motorola. IBM employees at the Somerset center are being offered jobs at Motorola if they's like to stay. Juicy details are in an InfoWorld Electric story.

Don't panic, or anything; PowerPC development will continue. In fact, it's possible that the technology may progress even faster now, since both companies will "leverage their individual design activities" to compete for chip sales to Apple. Motorola, at least, is hoping that having free rein over the whole design center will let them "expand [their] commitment to new designs for Apple." IBM, on the other hand, seems to want to focus their development on "high-end PowerPC microprocessors for its server products," which may or may not have much direct use to Apple. After all, one of the reasons that the G3 is so cool is because it's optimized for Mac OS performance, so IBM's high-end chips might not be as Mac-suitable as they could be. On the other hand, we keep hearing whispers about how servers are a big part of Apple's future product strategy, so who knows?

By the way, we know that the PowerPC alliance includes Apple as well, so before we get a slew of mail referring to bigamy, ménages à trois, etc. keep in mind that it's really only IBM and Motorola actually working on the chips themselves. Although, back in the heady days of Exponential we suppose you'd have had an interesting point...