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Comment by napierzaza | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft killed off all sorts of competitors using their sales channel with suppliers and other pressure tactics. You don't know what you're missing because it never happened.

I wish people would stop saying that Bill Gates has always been a nice guy because he's retired and giving away his money.

Don't fool yourself into thinking that MS is more open, they don't have much of a mobile OS for you to compare with iOS anyways.

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So you mean if OS X won instead of Windows, there would be more competitors, right? Nope, there would be even less, because Apple makes it's own hardware, it would have killed off a lot of hardware companies, AMD, ATI being big examples.

And Apple is going to kill off so many hardware companies because if it wins like Windows, it's going to be the sole arbitrator of who gets to build hardware for it.

All MS wanted was for you to pay the Windows tax. Apple wants to control the hardware as well. Eg. Windows Phone 7 is a OS that various OEMs can run on different devices. iOS is basically just firmware for Apple's devices.

BS. MS cared very, very much about what software you ran. Remember Netscape? Borland? Microsoft J++? They put pressure on OEMs not to ship Netscape that make anything Apple's done with iOS pale in comparison.

It may be hard to appreciate today, but in the 90's you couldn't start a software company without a ready answer for how you were going to survive if MS decided they had to kill your product to protect the Windows monopoly.

There is a difference between competing in a business environment and limiting what your customers can do with your product. Although competition may indirectly determine what customers can do (by destroying businesses that may have created software they wanted) it is different from directly controlling what customers can do the way Apple does.

I really can't see a meaning with that comment.

I don't think anyone claimed that Apple's e.g. censoring porn is the same kind as Microsoft murdering competition and slowing down development.

For porn -- relax, much online video works on the iPad. :-)

I would argue almost all areas is better with competition. If you prefer monopoly solutions, there is still North Korea (Cuba will go a bit capitalism, I've seen).

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