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Comment by launchtomorrow | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft became Microsoft because they were better at marketing/business in the technology industry, not because they were better at building and shipping technology.

Amiga workstations and Macs in the late 80s were way ahead of DOS's UX with its 640k RAM limits and poor CGA graphics capabilities. But they became the standard and caught up with the graphics and multimedia capabilities of the other two platforms 20 years later once they could invest into removing their technical debt.

In contrast, Amiga died a slow and painful death because of mismanagement and owner squabbles, even though they were used for much more than home gaming (real time TV station visuals) even into the early naughties. They were just much better than the alternatives. And ahead of its time as a technical platform and home PC.

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I was a diehard Apple user back in the 80s but PCs were clearly better in a lot of ways they were cheaper and because of the number of PC manufacturers more versatile.

After Windows 95 came out and before MacOS 10.1,Windows was better than Mac OS. Except for very brief windows, x86 was faster than the current 680x0 and PPC processors.

The importance of the selection of Microsoft to provide the operating system for the IBM PC cannot be overemphasized. It was not the only thing that made Microsoft what it became (the decision to make Windows for PC-compatible computers, and to make decent business applications for it, were critical), but without the first step, it probably would not have been in a position to do what followed.

There is also path-dependence in IBM's decision to make the PC architecture open (as an attempt to grow it quickly despite being late to the party), which is what made Windows possible.

You touch on something that's a very important point: path dependence. There are a ton of both de jure and de facto technology standards that we are locked into at some level because they gained dominance at one point because of some combination of tech, marketing, industry dynamics, and more. Once Ethernet, USB, x86, or whatever gets established it's hard to kick it out for something else that is locally better.

This has become increasingly the case in much of the tech sector because of the increased importance of interoperability , ecosystems, and network effects. Conversely, you do see fairly rapid switching aware from online properties that aren't sticky because something new and shiny has come along.

Also because Microsoft made the right decision for business customers when it came to backwards compatibility.

Also because Microsoft licensed the OS to hundreds of PC clone manufacturers. Amiga was a closed proprietary system.

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