Re:As Facebook Takes a Beating, a Brutal Movie Is Set to Mak...
by celoyd on Saturday May 15, 2010 @06:48PM
(#1350827)
This is why my first premise is important. I’m asking you to accept that Windows could have been better without serious harm to its success. I’m blaming Gates more for things like security and usability than for an approach to hardware platforms. If you disagree, I’d be interested to know why.
Basically, I recognize the huge benefit to society that Microsoft was involved with. What I’m asking is whether they used the huge opportunities they got (by hook or by crook) as well as should be expected.
(“Third world”, incidentally, originally meant countries that were unaligned in the Cold War, and has no clear meaning when it comes to poverty or human development.)
Re:As Facebook Takes a Beating, a Brutal Movie Is Set to Mak...
by nitrogen on Saturday May 15, 2010 @08:10PM
(#1350943)
Unfortunately it's probably impossible to prove that no one would have taken IBM and Microsoft's places. I highly doubt that, had IBM not made the PC and Microsoft not bought QDOS, we wouldn't have had a PC revolution. I think it just would've been different, maybe with more competition, maybe with an Apple monopoly and Amiga occupying the margins, but it still would've happened.
If Microsoft would have delivered sexy / functional products, nobody would have noticed ... not only that, but they would have a legion of people defending them.
Unfortunately they preferred to make partnerships with companies like Intel, Compaq or HP, favoring IBM-compatible PCs, or hardware that was more open / accessible, putting a lot of control in the hands of hardware companies.
Maybe it was IBM breathing down their necks, maybe it made sense for their business, but if this didn't happen Windows NT would've been released as a consumer version instead of Win 9x ... which is the main culprit of almost all problems associated with Windows.
And I don't know what "big debt to society" you're talking about ... in '95 in my (arguably third world country) I live in schools in small towns had computer-labs with Microsoft software on it. If IBM-compatible PCs weren't so popular (with MS software contributing a lot to that) or free to clone, we wouldn't have had local companies producing cheap computers, and thus we wouldn't have had computers in school (and I wouldn't be a software developer for that matter).
IMHO, I see a lot of double-standards flying around.