Thanks for the response!

A few notes, the intent of the monopoly statement was not in regards to either company, but looking at them together in aggregate. There are plenty of resources out there with similar stats. Per wikipedia (using StatCounter global stats), Google and Apple together comprise 99.46% of all mobile market share as of Oct 2020. While aggregation across two competitors may not meet strict definitions of a single company monopoly, together they hold a pretty solid lock over the current market of mobile OS.

I appreciate your “google’d out comment” Microsoft certainly jumped ship on that one. Back in college in 2000 I had one of the original Microsoft tablets through a partnership between the school, HP, and Microsoft. Loved that thing. I thought it was the next big thing. Yeah, they cut bait on that one too.

What does feel frustrating here is that having built a new PC for gaming last year after using my previous machine for over 10 years, now I find that I can’t use it to upgrade to Windows 11. It has a TPM header, but the $400 premium x570 motherboard did not come with a TPM module installed (MSI MEG x570 Unify). My fancy new rig does not pass the requirements for Windows 11.

The argument isn’t that the TPM module is a good thing or not. Better security helps everyone, it is just the implementation of things and the presentation that can feel slimy and frustrating sometimes. Also the requirement to have a system online for installation is simply a pain.

Setting aside whether the article is seen as whining, complaining, or simply venting — I am happy to fall back on Microsoft’s past history of either dropping requirements or adding more time for support to Windows 10.