The closest thing we have in the tech/geek world resembling a world sport is bashing Microsoft.  There are sites dedicated to it, world-wide efforts to bring and end to its products, bias that runs deeper and stronger the geekier you get.

In a way to gain street cred in the tech world you need to hate MS.

But here is something that MS does better than practically anyone else: It knows how to support independent developers (via Sawickipedia.com).

The Sawicki references a Scobleizer post talking about how Apple is playing true to type and how this may jeopardize its long term strategies. Why? At least in part because [Apple] told developers to go pound sand.

The one piece of this pie that I'd like to add is the fact Visual Studio is the best IDE on the market and has been for a decade. They Visual Studio Group at MS has consistently produced a high quality product. The MSDN program and associated sites, Channel 9, all the team blogs...Microsoft knows how important the developer is and wants to make sure their needs are met.

We're wrong and MS is doomed

Now for a countering opinion I send you over to someone with almost the same weight as Scoble: Joel on Software - How Microsoft Lost the API War. In which he basically states that the change to .Net has removed the primary advantage that MS had which was the desktop as a programming environment.  Now that everything is migrating to the web what does it matter the underlying technology.

My opinion is that Microsoft appreciates the developer more than most of its competitors.  And in the long run this will result in continued strength in the developer community maybe not dominance anymore, but still a strong presence.