Microsoft is like a bull in a china shop. It tries to take Adobe head-on! It all started with the take over of Creature’s House Expression in september 2003. To use as a development tool and to show off WPF.
After that Microsoft bought iView Multimedia. iView Multimedia will become Microsoft Expression Media in the next release of Microsoft Expression Studio. – Please hold on… GLA (Geek Language Alert)! – Windows Vista has a Presentation Foundation (WPF) just like the Mac has Quartz, WPF (formerly code named Avalon) is the graphical (compositing) subsystem of the .NET Framework 3.0 (formerly called WinFX) …still with me? 
and is direct related to XAML (eXtensible Application Markup Language). So what this crap mean? Well it means Microsoft is developing it’s own Graphic Foundation Layer in it’s next-gen Operating System, nothing wrong with that, you might say!? Only Microsoft always has the urge not to compete, but to destroy it’s competitors!
So let’s skip a few months to the present. Microsoft recently dropped the ability of Microsoft Office 2007 to save as PDF but it will make the feature available through a downloadable add-on. So why did Adobe prevent Microsoft of using PDF in MS-Office, the most requested feature? Well Microsoft designed it’s own ‘open’ document format called XPS. XPS (XML Paper Specification) (formerly called Metro) is a XML based electronic document format, a spool format and a page description language and works tightly together with Vista’s new printing subsystem. Hooray they all cheered, finally the Macintosh way of printing! That’s the only reason Microsoft needed PDF. (Well see it as a transitional phase
Last year Adobe bought Macromedia creating a monopolistic 10 pound graphic gorilla. Microsoft is foreseeing that Adobe become to powerful and is creating it’s own alternative creative suite. Don’t get me wrong I love competition it’s good for the market and it’s good for the consumer. But Microsoft has to port it’s technologies and applications to the Macintosh platform to succeed. Macintosh users aren’t savvy to use Microsoft products. Now and then they kill (EOL) some of their apps (Windows Media Player, Internet Explorer etc.) which isn’t helpful either, getting trust in the Macintosh community. Also Microsoft has huge identity problems, they really would like to be cool like Apple, as seen in efforts like XBox and Zune, but it’s like Steve Jobs said:
…Microsoft has no taste…
