Those 10 or so, he said, will be in addition to three desktop Microsoft icons that Microsoft is mandating.
For example, if a PC maker decides to put a non-Microsoft icon on the Windows desktop, Microsoft requires that the manufacturer place three Microsoft icons on the desktop as well -- one for the Internet Explorer browser, one for the Windows Media Player and another for the MSN online service.
On July 11, when Microsoft announced the new flexibility for PC makers, the company says, it was always its intention to insist on the three Microsoft icons if a computer maker chose to put one or more non-Microsoft icons on the desktop.
If manufacturers put a shortcut, or "icon", for competing products on the desktop, they must place three Microsoft icons there as well.Microsoft's concept of openness is reminiscent of a funnel: easy to get into, but hard to get out of.
Microsoft groups its icons in different tabs along the top, but they don't automatically appear when you need them as they do in Pages.
If Microsoft was serious about replacing icons with tiles, they'd have done it.
But the judge said that Microsoft only needed to remove the icon that users see on their computer screen, rather than the underlying computer code that software developers write to.
To take an example from Microsoft: a user may not like the scissors icon used to denote 'cut' in Microsoft software, but everyone understands what this icon denotes, and shared understanding should take precedence over personal aesthetics.
Small, hardly noticeable, on its face unimportant, this sentence arrogates to Microsoft the very first screen of icons and program choices a user sees when the computer starts up for the first time.
