Graham Coles

UK

Software Engineer

Perhaps we should be asking why microsoft always thinks there is the need for a new standard, but whenever one comes out their software doesn't support it.

Do they support H.264 (mpeg 4 part 10) the Industry standard for video (or even standard mpeg 4 formats)? Have they even heard of OGG?

We already have JPEG2000 and formats like PNG (curiously another format Microsoft didn't appear to want to support).

Even with the whole world using PDF for document interchange, Microsoft seem to shun their paying customers by refusing to add support for saving as a pdf in MS Office because they want to introduce their own variant called "Microsoft e-paper" ...

Perhaps there is a reason why people don't like or trust Microsoft - they ignore all other standards but the ones they invent themselves.

I don't know who's worse, Microsoft or Sony (for inventing yet another memory card standard - twice!)

Competition may be good in general, but all of this standard re-inventing seems to offer no real improvement on what already esists and is little more than a pathetic branding war. It does nothing for interoperability and just causes more compatibility issues than we already have.

Good for Microsoft and Sony profits, but the rest of us end up dealing with all the crap.