Remember when Windows 3.0 and 3.1 came out (the first usable versions of Windows)? Did you ever pick up the Petzold Windows programming book, sit down with a compiler, start typing code in, and then sit there in sheer dumb unbelieving shock at what you had to go through to get a "Hello World" program to run? This convoluted twist-your-brain API was advancing the computer field? If this is the type of "advancing" the computer field Microsoft is talking about, we could do with a lot less of it.

(And, of course, one problem after that is that once we had this API they pretty much had to stick with it and its descendants, occasionally adding poorly designed layers like MFC on top of it.)

I put Petzold down and didn't even try to touch programming Windows until Delphi came out years later. No wonder the first Windows programs were crummy, buggy, crashy, and trashy - I think the first reliable program I ever got for Windows was Quicken.

Even today, the only main "innovations" Microsoft is engaged in is finding new and improved ways of locking their customers into their products.