Point to a single "private" API. There is no such thing. Preemptive apologies if you're a non technical person as these things are obvious to most programmers so I don't really want to berate anyone for simply not having sufficient information.
Or search msdn for "This API is not intended to be used directly from your code" for examples of other APIs that are 'private' to Microsoft and will similarly get you booted.
Going back in time, there were (still are) a great many dlls and services in Windows with unnamed exports and not available to the general public (eg win32k, csrss, milcore etc).
Go back to the dark ages and as others have already mentioned there's the famous AARD example that used undocumented DOS data structures to distinguish MS-DOS from other variants.
Like I said, nothing new.
Um.. That is not a private API. Those are the terms of the STORE, not the OS. You can use the API from whatever app you want. Although as a programmer I personally dislike such restrictions, its no different from what Google or Apple are doing for their own stores.
>Going back in time, there were (still are) a great many dlls and services in Windows with unnamed exports and not available to the general public (eg win32k, csrss, milcore etc)
What the... What are you talking about? Those DLLs are internal OS DLLs. Nobody besides OS components has any use for those APIs.
>Go back to the dark ages and as others have already mentioned there's the famous AARD example
Which never shipped since it was part of a windows beta version.
>Like I said, nothing new.
You can say anything you want ofcource. You'll have to bring actual evidence if you want to be taken seriously though.
As for 'internal OS DLLs' I think it's subjective as to whether those APIs have any use outside of OS components (and indeed what constitutes an 'OS component'). I happen to think there's some really useful stuff in there. Anyway, I only brought it up to highlight that there are some things Microsoft has decided we can't use for whatever reason. Again, I think it's reasonable to consider them 'private', non-public, internal. I'm not saying any of this is good\bad or that they shouldn't have the right to do this sort of thing. Just that it exists.
As for AARD, technically it did 'ship' as the code was included in Win3.1 but was benign thanks to a runtime flag. Even in beta form it highlights that this sort of thing, relying on undocumented behavior, has been used at Microsoft for a very long time. Perhaps it's an insignificant example but it did cost them close to $300M in a settlement so seemed pretty relevant to me.
Anyway, I shall leave it to other readers to decide if any of this constitutes evidence of so-called private APIs by Microsoft.
Thanks.
