Here’s a SOAPBOX Follow-up: from last week’s article “Make Windows 8 Maker Friendly” by Paul who helped get this idea out in the world. So far it seems Microsoft is looking in to this and will be contacting Paul. He has a post up on DorkbotPDX with some response and opinions. I’d also like to thank all the makers who posted up about this encouraging Microsoft to make Windows 8 more maker friendly.

Of course, many people feel it’s unlikely Microsoft will ever respond. I’m skeptical too. But impossible as it seemed, with a substantial effort a couple years ago, I managed to convince Apple to update their CDC driver to support CDC-IAD… which is used by Teensyduino’s Serial+Keyboard+Mouse+Joystick option, and is now also used by Arduino Leonardo.

Here you can see a comment from an Apple developer, offering the USB descriptors from a Teensy-based demo board I sent to Apple in April 2010, which ultimately lead to Lion (10.7) supporting CDC-IAD. It is sometimes possible to reach the right people and make a real difference!

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