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There was no reasonable alternative to Windows for any consumer. There's a reason that the 90% market share number was for Windows.

Also, you could have developed whatever you wanted, but made an active choice to try to extinguish those applications with OEMs, ISPs, and content providers to squeeze out Netscape. It's truly lost on people today how Bill Gates was an absolute killer back in the day.

    > How? Just like Apple, Microsoft was only being mean spirited to SW and HW vendors and competitors, not to consumers.

The consumer experience for iPhone users is much better than that of Windows users back in the day. People were scared of Windows.

>There was no reasonable alternative to Windows for any consumer.

Didn't stop you from selling your SW for the Windows platform without paying Microsoft a dime or Microsoft having any way to stop you. Look at WinRar or the thousands of other small companies who made a living selling SW for Windows without paying Microsoft a cent.

>The consumer experience for iPhone users is much better than that of Windows users back in the day.

UX is subjective and debatable. And there's a difference between one having poor UX, and one being "mean spirited towards users".

    > Didn't stop you from selling your SW for the Windows platform without paying Microsoft a dime or Microsoft having any way to stop you.

If Microsoft could have, they would have. The only way to sell software was in boxes and intermediaries took 80% of developers money.

>The only way to sell software was in boxes and intermediaries took 80% of developers money.

But did Microsoft take their money like Apple does today?

The internet and shareware distributions was also a thing back then, where you get the SW for free from anywhere, and send a payment to the developer and received an activation key over the phone/post.

I think you're taking all of the decisions that led up to the success of the iPhone for granted. For instance, if this path is such a no-brainer, why doesn't Microsoft install a walled garden of their own? It's not due to the beneficence of their hearts.

Something that is a surefire success in one platform is not necessarily a surefire success in another. Which is why saying in hindsight "this is monopolistic behavior!" is such a silly thing to do.

Well, for one MS Visual Studio used to cost a fortune. Sure you could use whatever other -- also expensive -- DE or compiler but the end result and the ergonomics weren't as good.

If I'm not mistaken you also had to pay to redistribute or link to system libraries so yeah, you had to pay a pretty penny to play.

> Didn't stop you from selling your SW for the Windows platform without paying Microsoft a dime

Microsoft would charge you up-front for things like dev tools (Visual Studio), documentation (MSDN), server software (MS SQL, Windows Server), etc. Yeah, you could get alternatives, but it wasn't until the very end of the 90s that you started to see FOSS really take off in a way that would be appropriate for an enterprise-style environment.

App stores take a cut of revenue, while Microsoft would get its revenue before your project shipped.

If there was no reasonable alternative then why was it 90% and not 100%?

Because Microsoft injected money into Apple to prop them up and maintain 10%.

MS wasn't buying those machines. Someone one was buying them... as an alternative to a Windows PC.

> Yes Microsoft had a 90% OS market share but it was an open OS running on open HW platform wich had many players

The actual thing that Microsoft got in trouble for was technical and legal restrictions Microsoft put in place, especially on OEM/hardware manufacturers, to prevent prebundling of the paid Netscape product.

This is very similar to how Google lost against Epic on it's "open" Android, while Apple (mostly) won https://www.theverge.com/24003500/epic-v-google-loss-apple-w...

Interestingly enough - the one point Apple lost on in the Epic case is exactly what they're being fined for by the EU.

Apple has a 20 to 30% market share in Europe. All these comparisons apply to the us only ( where, interestingly enough, Apple is not getting fined it would seem ).

This is an interesting point.

The EU always seems to be the one doing the work with this sort of regulation. Maybe the evil solution is just: avoid anti-competitive behavior in the EU.

Consumers weren’t Microsoft Windows customers for the most part - OEMs were. OEMs were not free to install any other operating system. Well they were. But they still had to pay for a Windows license even on computers shipped without Windows.

And this article is about the EU where iOS is less than 40% and Apple Music is less than 10%

>OEMs were not free to install any other operating system.

All the PCs I bought in 90's Europe came without Windows OS preinstalled. What you're talking about it the deals between Microsoft and the likes of Dell/HP/Compaq, etc, but nobody forced you to buy those brands as there were plenty of other local assembled alternatives without OS in the shops back then.

You mean like no one forces you to buy iPhones because there are plenty of Android devices?

Androids can't run the SW developed for iOS same how X86 PCs built at home can run the SW developed for X86 PCs sold by Dell/Compaq nor can you sell you iOS SW you developed for Apple HW outside of Apple's SW garden.

Please stop making up arguments that are not in good faith.

I said that Microsoft’s customers were OEMs and that MS was found to be a monopoly because they forced OEMs to pay for Windows licenses for every computer shipped whether or not the computer was running Windows. This was part of the lawsuit.

The reply was that there were other computers sold in Europe by the non big brands that did not include Windows.

You could not in fact run the “same” Windows software if you were not running Windows

> Androids can't run the SW developed for iOS

Sure they can. You can install free emulators on Android, can't you? Just side-load it, and Bob's your uncle.