Re:BeOS: The Alternate Universe's Mac OS X
by philwelch on Thursday January 09, 2020 @02:42PM
(#22004776)
I honestly think it was less any type of Wintel conspiracy and more that platforms have network effects. Between Palladium not working out and Microsoft actually making Windows NT for some RISC ISA's, there wasn't actually an Intel/Microsoft conspiracy to dominate the industry together. They each wanted to separately dominate their part of the industry and both largely succeeded, but MS would have been just as happy selling Windows NT for SPARC/Alpha/PowerPC workstations and Intel would have been just as happy to have Macs or BeBoxes using their chips.
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Re:BeOS: The Alternate Universe's Mac OS X
by msla on Thursday January 09, 2020 @03:42PM
(#22005465)
> I honestly think it was less any type of Wintel conspiracy and more that platforms have network effects.
True. I've always regarded "Wintel" as more descriptive than accusatory. It's just a handy shorthand to refer to one specific monoculture.
> Between Palladium not working out and Microsoft actually making Windows NT for some RISC ISA's, there wasn't actually an Intel/Microsoft conspiracy to dominate the industry together.
Right. They both happened to rise and converge, and it's humanity's need to see patterns which turns that into a conspiracy to take over the world. They both owe IBM a huge debt, and IBM did what it did with no intention of being knocked down by the companies it did business with.