The other companies were run by Technical people, MS was being run by business people who paid well(not just tech) and made deals to get themselves ahead. You can call it playing dirty, I call it business.
Sure at some point somebody else would have finally gotten it going. But at the time there was no other company who was capable, they didn't have people who could sell investors like MS could, they couldn't make deals with Hardware manufactures like they could. I am not saying we wouldn't have moved along, but it would have been slower. You have to understand what MS made. They made things easy, and noticeable. They got a Rolling Stones song, they paid for commercials. They really didn't have any competitors at the time. IBMs stock was way low and OS2 sucked, they didn't have any money to market. Apples stock wasn't doing nearly as well as MS, and by 1995 they were in no position to compete. Back in the early 80s they were all at about the same spot. Apple stayed with MS until the late 80s early 90s. At that point they split. MS was able to get businesses to buy their products because they were easier to manage. Which meant you could pay less for the people. It also meant some businesses could now finally afford to purchase it. Soon people started to put computers at home. MS saw this and developed a product for the home user that was cheap and familiar. People bought it. MS made a wizard which made it easy to connect to the Internet, people did. Other companies didn't have the cash or the personal to do this. This may be because of MS playing dirty, but what it really comes down to is company management. MS could the others couldn't. At some point you have to look past the technical aspects of this. Sure other people were better but nobody knew about them because they didn't make themselves known. They didn't make themselves known because they didn't know how. At 11:47 AM 9/27/2001 +1000, you wrote: >Then another company would have come along and done the same thing. > >You surely cannot all assume that if Microsoft didn't exist, then we wouldn't >have moved anywhere?? Of course we would.... all the same software, more or >less, would have been developed... it would have taken another company.. >Caldera after there DR-DOS days possibly, to have taken other peoples >innovations and wrap a window manager wround the back of it. > >You just don't know what could have happened, because any competitor to MS >got annihalted before MS even really started. IBM and Caldera both had DOS >tools out, the other attempt at a windows GUI that appeared around the days >of Windows 1 too (that I can't remember the name of).... Mac OS was >available, Unix was available, and soon came OS2... they were all there.... >all potentials.. and if any one of them played dirty, forced it onto every >PC, and then put the marketing bucks in, any one of them would be as well of >as MS are now... yes even Unix!! > >To think that computers wouldn't have taken off as much as they have without >MS is completely naive, IMHO. > >There were many alternatives, that in the same position as MS would have been >just as good. And even more to think of..... if MS hadn't played dirty, but >played fairly.... we may even have been in a completely BETTER position. >Maybe competition would have forced companies to release solid, stable >products. > >Personally... I'd probably still be doing the same thing that I am today, >regardless of whether MS had been around or not. I was working with >computers before MS existed... and I think we'd be in a pretty similar, >maybe better, maybe not, but a very similar place without them. > >N ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Structure your ColdFusion code with Fusebox. Get the official book at http://www.fusionauthority.com/bkinfo.cfm Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/cf-community@houseoffusion.com/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists
