[sprout]

Specifically they're patenting graceful shutdown of a graphical windowing environment, with a series of prompts to ask the user if they are sure that they want to terminate processes that cannot be gracefully stopped.

All of it seems blindingly obvious, but then it also doesn't look like a claim against any non-Windows OS would last 10 seconds in a court, as there are a ton of clearly Windows-specific claims.

[terinjokes]

Actually, I read the patent differently. They seem to be claiming that a series of prompts is slow to the user, and that they've invented a more efficient and faster system.

1) Non-GUI applications (or applications without a window) should be terminated automatically 2) Applications with a top window can veto, but when they do the other applications are removed from the screen, so that the user can focus on the application veto-ing. 3) Users can be presented with a "Shut Down Now" button, to force the shutdown, ignoring any application vetoes.

Also, remember the description is not part of the patent, only the claims section is. As far as I see, the claims are OS-agnostic.

[ithkuil]

I don't see that differently from what other graphical OS do; of course there are minor differences but both macosx and gnome (didn't check other linux GUIs) have something similar.

I'm not saying that they didn't copy it from windows, but I think the features were there before microsoft filed this patent (2005).

[kenjackson]

It does seem obvious. Can anyone point to the first OS to do this, enumerate processes that won't shut down and give the user the ability to do so?

It would be somewhat remarkable if this never was done until 2005.