A History of Microsoft's AntiCompetitive Behavior

[vlad321]

WereKitten said:

@Vlad321

 

Sorry, but most of what you said about UIs, OS costs, Macs, the story of Internet, coding standards is simply false.

- Windows had the worst WIMP UI of its time: Mac OS classic had a lot of technical problems with its architecture, but the UI was where it shone. AmigaOS, OS/2, BeOS were all better interfaces than Windows in the 90s.

- Windows was not cheaper than the alternative OSs that were also licensed for any PC. The IBM OS/2 could even run windows application and in its Warp incarnations had a much better foundation than any non-NT-based Windows ever had.

- Apple chose to go Intel because it offered a better CPU roadmap than the Power architecture, but coding for the Mac didn't change at all. Basically all it took was recompiling the sources. It did not make coding for the Mac any more "viable" than when it was on the Power architecture.

- Why would Windows be the saviour from an expensive Apple monopoly? The alternative is not between a MS monopoly and an Apple one. Ever heard of Linux or BeOS? Any monopoly will stifle real innovation: even when it promotes standards, it places the control of those standards into the hands of a single entity. Then that entity will let that standard go stale or force update cycles depending on its commercial needs. Not all standards are born equal: whatusers really gain from are open standards, if they are smartly designed and updated.

- Internet was not "a mess", it was simply in its infancy. There was no more mess than today's technologies (Web pages, eMail, RSS, FTP, newsgroups, Flash...)

- Actually MS have held back most interesting web technologies for all they could because they didn't want the spotlight to move from local to web development, where they can't control the environment. They have been forced into having a rich web mail client and a web office infrastructure, but they have been dragged kicking and screaming by the like of Google.

The advances in Internet happened despite MS and IE, not thanks to them. Whatever MS could not control and "standardize" in their own way actually evolved at a blistering pace. Just look at Apache vs IIS, at Postgres and MySQL vs MS SQL Server, at Gmail and Google Maps and all the Google AJAX services, at PHP vs ASP... they are the backbone of the small-medium sites and services that make the Internet that we know.

I suggest you read a bit about all these subjects. I suspect that you have a restricted point of view because you haven't had a wide enough first-hand experience both in timespan and variety of tools.

 

UI compared to DOS. I fully realize there were other GUIs out when Windows was released, mainly Apple's. And overall, Windows 1.0-2.1 were just addendums to DOS. It's with DOS that Microsoft started dominating and putting a computer everywhere. Again, back then theonly other serious competitor was Apple and they just overpriced their computers. Under that the computer would not have spread so fast and so quickly. The only reason Internet grew so fast was because computers were so widespread by the time it was taking off. There is no Internet without the computers to use it.

Also you mention OS/2, which was developed by IBM and Microsoft, and Microsoft even said OS/2 was the future, calling it Windows Plus. The problem was, just like Apple, Windows 3.0 and DOS came out bundled with just about all computers manufactured, rather cheaply to, while OS/2 sold at retailers and cost a lot more than the bundled Window 3.0, not to mention the lack of drivers for like printers and other things not made by IBM.

The other real competitors came way after computers were widespread (Linux in '91 or so) and there probably would not have been complaining bitching people if they didn't have access to computers to begin with. Access granted by Microsoft.

Look I'm no lover of Microsoft, I'm a CS major and I'd love to get the source code, however credit where credit is due. Microsoft propelled the explosions of the computers, and solely Microsoft. If it had been left to other competitors, with the prices they wanted, we wouldn't have even reached the point where the internet would have begun to be used on such a wide scale, much less have people bitch about companies stifling it. Hate it, spit on it, but the reason why you're enjoying information traded so easily is because of Microsoft.