Ray Ozzie Lies ...
kuoi.com
kuoi.com
Yet I cannot agree with this stupid post.
Sticking to domain specific historical facts without looking around and viewing the whole spectrum is none the less but ignorant.
Microsoft with its evil way spread the word around.
Microsoft brought the PC into every house for what seems to be at the begining a reasonable price.
Yes, I think at the end, the price of your privacy and freedom, viruses and loss of data is higher than one can anticipated at the begining.
Microsoft was ugly all the way when trying to fight the web standards every time.
Moreover, without windows being that popular and making computing and computing related such great business, I might not even picked up my profession as a software developer early then at 1995.
If DOS weren't so popular as to turn the the PC platform into a commodity, other platform would certainly become dominant. If not, an OS like Unix, that could bridge the gap between different platforms, would emerge as the OS of choice to develop for. Microsoft tried to position itself that way with Xenix but, ultimately, saw the PC clones and DOS as viable options to take that role. They tried the same move with MSX with a much more limited success (primarily because of the PC price drop).
If Microsoft could be credited for something, it should be of limiting the diversity in the PC scene. While in the late 70s and early 80s you had at least half a dozen different platforms with different software and characteristics, today you have only one with different performance and price points. No one is crazy enough to innovate out of Windows compatibility.
The web might exist but as a phenomenon among people who buy weird computers like NeXTs.
I could be wrong here but it's my understanding that the PC clone market was an unintended consequence of 1) doing the job in a hasty slapdash way with off-the-shelf components 2) handing control of the OS to a third party, namely Microsoft, without an exclusive license. IBM had just one tiny bit of proprietary knowledge, the BIOS, and once that was out of control, the PC clone market was up and running.
There was a time when Microsoft was the promethean hero bringing computing power to the masses. They really earned their dominant position back then, compared to how closed IBM and Apple were. Granted, the architecture and software were crap compared to many of their competitors, but Gates correctly analyzed that having the most open platform would eventually solve those problems.
DesqView386 OS/2 GeOS
As windowable multi-tasking PC OS's (DesqView wasn't really an OS) from the same era as Windows 3.0. And these were the "readily available" ones, countless other less memorable options existed as well.
Windows/Microsoft is a right place/right time bit of luck, coupled with a business savvy on Gates' part, story. The world of Personal Computers would have continued to evolve with or without Microsoft. And I personally believe the PC world would have likely been better off with the path things were on without Microsoft.
edit: Oooh. Awesome. You only hear it if you visit the site in Internet Explorer. It's this type of immature, irrational Microsoft hatred that makes all of the folks who avoid MS products for good reasons look bad.
(I can't find the quote anywhere, but I read it in 1996 in a magazine in Germany, loved it, and remembered it. I could be wrong, though.)