In an excellent article recently written on PC World, tech analyst Mike Elgan points out that Apple may have replaced Microsoft as the computer company that people love to hate. As he admits in the article, his goal in doing this was not to bury Apple, but rather to point out that neither Apple nor Microsoft deserved a lot of the vitriol heaped at them in terms of bundling software and forcing it on users as well as using the large inertia of their monopoly-like companies to bowl over competitors and stifle creativity in the marketplace as a result. You can get a good lowdown on exactly how Apple is doing today what Microsoft used to do from that article, but there is a point
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It would be completely foolish for anyone that knows anything about analyzing the electronics industry to write off a product that Microsoft has created. If there is one thing the corporation has shown again and again it is that they can market a thoroughly bad product to death and make it into a good product through sheer force of will. The Surface is by no means a bad product in the absolute sense, but has been made to look bad because of cost overruns and a comparatively fantastic iPhone sales number. However, Microsoft has been plugging away with the Surface, getting marketing deal after marketing deal to the point where the Surface Computer and the Multitouch technology it carries has been recognized as a mainstream