WRONG.

Microsoft pulled out of the coalition pushing the bill at somewhere around the last minute at the impetus of a wingnut preacher.

This isn't a neutral act, this is betrayal of trust. If MS had decided not to participate in the legislative process with respect to this to begin with, people might grumble but businesses don't have to lobby everything.

Their change in position can be considered certain to have affected at least 1 vote, MS is the 600 pound gorilla of WA politics and has entirely too much political influence in the rest of the nation. Well, that legislation lost by one vote.

They have chosen to ally with the Religious Right and they figured nobody would notice.

Perhaps this doesn't bother you, but the fact that it doesn't tells us something about you.

It's also pretty stupid in a business sense. There really isn't much of a downside to switching to the Mac OS for the great majority of people, all most people have to lose is vulnerability to Windows viruses / trojans / spyware.

The groups they have chosen to blow off in favor of the Religious Right are in general, groups that have higher percentage of computer users, better educated, and know that there are other choices than Windows.

The threat of the wingnut preacher was an empty one. Unless you can see fundies switching to a computer company with the kind of liberal image Apple has.

The place to hurt MS is in the bank account. Switch to Apple, or stay with MS and don't be in any hurry to upgrade your OS and applications.

Avoiding MS completely in the business world is somewhere between difficult and impossible, but we can certainly conduct our business and personal computer use in ways that will make MS a lot less money.