> MS since ever used their market-share/power to dictate the market, invent > useless, platform specific stuff and thereby force users/developers to be > highly incompatible with anything (and they build a whole business model on > top of this). Not that I mean everything they did was bad or wrong, but they > USED their power to control the market:
What good is power if it can't be used? From the consumer's point of view, the dominance of Microsoft for the last 20 years has been great. The cost of Microsoft apps has gone steadily down due to all the competition. Functionality has increased. The availability of alternatives to Microsoft apps has not decreased. > Do you remember i.e. > - building Internet Explorer right into the OS (and thus forcing people to > use it over the competition), I have never been forced to use IE. There were always alternatives. I used IE for a long time just to be rebellious, then it got to where everyone was using it so I switched to Firefox. IE is still there but doesn't get in my way. > - the strange HTML-implementation (still) only supported by IE, No stranger than the strange HTML implementation only supported by any other browser. Netscape had its own peculiarities and none of the browsers are very rigorous about the HTML they can render. > - a completely stupid and incompatible JAVA VM, > - JScript, > - non-compliant DOM-functions, > - non-compliant HTTP-functions, > - a private "OpenDocument"-Format None of these, if they're true, have ever stopped me from doing anything I wanted to do with a Microsoft product, nor with any competing product. > So lots of (professional) developers were never free, but forced to develop > incompatible crap to stay in business. We do PDA software. We launched our company in 1998 doing Windows CE software. We were "forced" to develop Palm OS crap to stay in business because Windows CE wasn't selling. Before that I was with a company that wrote software that competed with Microsoft Money. Microsoft has tried but has never succeeded in dominating that market. I've been in consumer software for the same period of time that Microsoft has been in business and I've never been forced to develop any "incompatible crap" to stay in business. There's no practical way in which Microsoft's dominance of many of the markets in which it competes has negatively impacted consumers. Microsoft may have done things that frustrated developers, but what company hasn't done that? It's pretty easy to frustrate us. It's always been the case that there are non-Microsoft alternatives to everything, and they're just as good or better than the Microsoft products with which they compete. Craig --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "iPhoneWebDev" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/iphonewebdev?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
