Well... Microsoft is a little more weird. The company still freaks out over open source. And when they "officially" started endorsing some open source, it was in the context of their own open source licenses and their own open source hosting website.
Then they try and develop web technology, Silverlight, that is better than Flash by technical standards but is so entrenched in Microsoft-land that hardly anyone wants to do anything with it. You can't author anything for it when using Apple and Linux doesn't even get a runtime (Mono doesn't count, can never be feature-complete).
Apple doesn't seem quite the same. A lot of Apple developers are active in other developer communities. Microsoft developers seem to stick to Microsoft technologies. Perhaps this is because Microsoft has their own implementation of almost everything.
> "Silverlight, that is better than Flash by technical standards but is so entrenched in Microsoft-land that hardly anyone wants to do anything with it"
This is more to do with Flash being a defacto standard than anything else. I've been a Linux user since 10 years ago, and I haven't forgotten the piss-poor support of Adobe for Flash on Linux.
Heck, they finally decided to start porting Flash to Linux because of competition with Silverlight.
> "Mono doesn't count, can never be feature-complete"
Of course Mono counts, and compared to open-source Flash clones, it is in a far better shape.
I've been a Linux user since 10 years ago, and I haven't forgotten the piss-poor support of Adobe for Flash on Linux.
Hard to forget it when it won't go away. No 64-bit plugin, no accelerated video. (Their explanation that there are too many video acceleration APIs was pretty weak: if they adopted one, it would become the standard.)
Then they try and develop web technology, Silverlight, that is better than Flash by technical standards but is so entrenched in Microsoft-land that hardly anyone wants to do anything with it. You can't author anything for it when using Apple and Linux doesn't even get a runtime (Mono doesn't count, can never be feature-complete).
Apple doesn't seem quite the same. A lot of Apple developers are active in other developer communities. Microsoft developers seem to stick to Microsoft technologies. Perhaps this is because Microsoft has their own implementation of almost everything.