[nucleardog]

Most of the consumers are not making informed purchasing decisions. In the face of that, setting some minimal standards for OEMs is a reasonable step for Microsoft to protect and improve their brand.

Average people don't generally attribute the quality of the products to Dell, Acer, Lenovo, etc, they generally just lump it all together as "Windows" or "PCs". When they go out shopping purely on price and buy a $400 laptop only to get it home and find out a few months later they can't video call with their kids with their "new" laptop, they don't think "Wow, that's on me for buying such a cheap laptop!" or "I can't believe Dell sold me something that doesn't even have a webcam!". They think "Wow PCs suck maybe my friend was right and I should just buy an Apple."

People consistently compare a $400 Windows laptop to a $2500 MBP to say "PCs suck!" or a $300 Android to a $1400 iPhone to say "Androids suck!". Ensuring some minimum baseline of quality there is generally going to help Microsoft's brand and, frankly, the average uninformed consumer.

There's nothing stopping OEMs still shipping absolute garbage hardware and just putting Ubuntu on it so everyone can complain that Linux sucks instead. There's nothing stopping you from taking that and putting Windows on it yourself. There's nothing stopping you just putting a piece of tape over the webcam.

[MikeUt]

> a reasonable step for Microsoft to protect and improve their brand.

That MS chose to mandate cameras instead of hardware off-switches or disabled Management Engine backdoors to "protect their brand" should tell you everything.

[nucleardog]

That the vast majority of consumers care whether they can video chat with their family, and not whether there's some non-free microcode running in their computer?

I would assume that is self-evident.