22 May
1998
22 May
'98
1:01 a.m.
This is too good! I just can't resist getting my two cents worth in!
At 06:23 PM 5/21/98 -0700, you wrote:
Sure the DOS license was a big initial push, but to say
it was solely
responsible for the success of Microsoft is like saying the Model T is
responsible for Ford having the best selling vehicle in America today.
Then you had better go back and look at automotive history. Ford was
just another car company among dozens, yes dozens, of similar companies
until they brought out the model T. That put them in the lead and they've
been there ever since. Since the model T they've bought up or plowed under
most of the competion with the exception of the other major companies like
GM and Chrysler. That seems to be the same strategy that MS is using. MS
Hell! ALL companies do it! I used to work for Martin Marietta, look at
all the competitors they've bought up in the last couple of years!
Microsoft was a development products company, not an OS company. When I got
here in 1988, I remember seeing a revenue pie chart at the company meeting.
We were at around 60-70% revenue from development products like C++ &
FORTRAN, with a big slice from apps like Word & Multiplan, and DOS revenue
was a tiny slice.
Exactly and I'm sure that Win 95 or Win 98 will also be a tiny slice. MS
gives away the OS, then makes up the profit by selling you all the
applications that require that OS.
In a decade where everything had to be written directly
to the hardware to get any speed out of the 8088, you
can hardly say that
the DOS license had much to do with the success of the dev products.
Our first, all time most successful Windows app, Excel, that nuked the Lotus
1-2-3 monopoly through ease of use and customer demand alone, was _ported
from the Macintosh_. How exactly could we have leveraged our ownership of
Windows to make Excel successful when it wasn't even written for Windows?
What do mean, wasn't written for Windows??? You certainly couldn't take
a Mac disk and put it in a PC with Windows and run it! It may have
ORIGINALLY been written for a Mac but it was certainly rewritten for
Windows. The Windows very only looked and actly like the Mac version, the
code was entirely rewritten.
If IBM endorsing & bundling an OS makes it a monopoly, why is OS/2 dead?
Because (1) MS very publicly announced that they were dropping support
for it (2) MS (and others) never sold any significant application programs
for it.
That's exactly what a monoply is all about, the power to kill a rival
product through direct action or in this case a lack of action. That's why
DOJ and a lot of others would like to see MS's monopoly broken.
Joe
etc.
Kai
-----Original Message-----
From: Doug Yowza [mailto:yowza@yowza.com]
Sent: Thursday, May 21, 1998 5:37 PM
To: Discussion re-collecting of classic computers
Subject: RE: cat Xerox | Apple | Microsoft ?
On Thu, 21 May 1998, Kai Kaltenbach wrote:
We weren't, and aren't, Orwellian
characters,
just folks trying to write software that people want to buy. Gee, I guess
it worked! So sue us!
I think one reason Microsoft is being sued is that Microsoft software does
not compete on the merits of the software alone. Windows 3.0 was the
first almost barely usable/tolerable version of Windows. I'm not a Mac
fan, but if you look at something like the Amiga and AmigaOS from 1985, it
was such a clearly better operating system and windowing system PC
environment compared to Microsoft's offering that if Microsoft had to
compete on technical merit alone, they would have been out of business
weeks after the Amiga's introduction.
To suggest that Microsoft's success is due to writing software that people
*want* to buy is disingenuous. Microsoft's success is due solely to the
monopoly IBM gave them in 1982. To their credit, Microsoft is only about
five years behind the curve. If IBM had kept the monopoly to themselves,
we'd all be closer to ten years behind the curve.
-- Doug