Back in the day, if you bought Windows directly from Microsoft, you'd get a pretty clean OS without too much bloat. I guess there were things like Minesweeper and Solitaire -- but those were apparently added to help people become proficient at using a mouse back when this was novel.

One if the offered extras was “Microsoft signature” optimized install that sounded like it came with extra stuff. As I was going to install Linux anyway, I declined.

Then I received the laptop which somehow did have “signature” set-up, so I looked into it: it was basically just pristine windows setup without crapware; Apparently, that’s the only thing they were selling at the time, but were welling to take extra money from people who didn’t want crapware.

Anti-trust is a joke and holding Microsoft accountable for 1/10th of today's standard operating procedure was ridiculous.

I'm pretty sure Apple never made anyone selling an iPhone pay them for an iOS license on all the phones they sell.

That's not to say Apple's conduct isn't egregious, but the context isn't the same either.

That's a wildly different situation. Of course Microsoft charges hardware vendors for Windows licenses - we have to pay for them too! Windows is Microsoft's main product - should they be giving away licenses to vendors?!? (I'm ignoring the underlying issue of sell vs produce here, because it's such a clear fallacy it's not even worth explaining)