[orev]

A big issue when you’re the platform is not competing with the developers who write apps for said platform. If MS included a lot of great apps as stock, it would impact a lot of vendors. Just look at how much the anti-virus vendors complained about Windows Defender and the removal of APIs those tools used.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

So here's a question: why shouldn't a platform just be a platform?

[toyg]

Because consumers don’t care what a platform is, they want a usable computing device. People are thoroughly frustrated by having to hunt for programs to do stuff that, to them, is an obvious necessity that should have been easy to do from the very start.

System utilities like notepad are a compromise between “giving users what they want” and “not burning too many bridges or attracting antitrust lawsuits”.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

> Because consumers don’t care what a platform is

Just once I'd like to have a discussion where someone doesn't drag out the strawman "average user" bullshit.

[belltaco]

How is that a strawman? You never interact with non-techies that use computers? Those customers are the vast vast majority of the Windows userbase by far.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

Because it is always trotted out with the implication that the user is precisely as stupid or uninterested as the poster needs them to be in order to make their case.

[scarface74]

Every platform vendor who knows what they are doing has a certain set of priorities and they are:

1. The company

2. The customer

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.

.

.

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3. Third party developers

[toyg]

You forgot "the government", which is really #3. Developers usually sit somewhere between "astronauts" and "things that from distance look like flies".

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

Which is why Microsoft Windows, the most targeted platform in the world for decades, never bothered to give a damn about developers.