A couple things I don't understand about your comment. Maybe this is my lack of understanding of the technology parts. From what I understand, there's hardware and there's software. When you buy hardware, you can strip the software if you want to use some other interface to make the computer work. How would Microsoft put a compiler in a computer that couldn't be stripped out to use another program? As to this particular lawsuit, that's not my understanding of what happened. This lawsuit was about business practices that Microsoft used to lock out their competitors out of the browser market. Your comment touches less on the Microsoft situation and more about whether antitrust lawsuits in general for technology products are necessary. If there was a piece of software or technology that would force users to use their product, would that be considered a monopoly? In a sense, isn't that the nature of competition that other companies are free to create a product that would break the stranglehold on the other company's product? Disclaimer: I tried to untwist my panties, but I think I like them that way. :p
The simple version is that, if you make the hardware and the software, you can put stuff in the hardware that only your software can talk to. (Because nobody else knows it exists, or because the hardware is looking for an enabling code that only your app can generate, etc.) It is kinda hard to get your head around nowadays, with 80% of all software running in a web browser. Bigger picture: Yes, the lawsuit had to happen. That broke the mold and allowed other platforms to come into existence. Without it, we wouldn't have been able to reach critical mass on tablets or smartphones, because MS software STILL sucks on those... and they've been out for years.