Only losing market share and power has made Microsoft produce software with reasonable quality, flexibility, and interoperability.<p>A lot of the credit for that goes to Apple&#x27;s crazy climb in popularity. But at least some of it also goes to technologists involved in networking, the internet, and the web, many of whom decided never to deal with any Microsoft stuff ever again. If you knew the frustration of Microsoft&#x27;s combination of lock-in and incompetence, back in 1995 - 2006 (my entire computing life at the time!) you wouldn&#x27;t blame them.