Bill,
VERY well said. I could not have said it better myself. One note: is that if Apple
would not have been so closed they might have had a much larger market share.
S
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>
>Jon, I'm sorry to say, but we do owe Microsoft a few (positive) things:
>
>The machine on your desk wouldn't exist if not for the foundations built
>on MS-DOS. Sure, I know, you run Linux now... but the machine is based
>on commodity parts that were produced to run an OS championed by IBM for
>he business world. Intel designed those parts, but if Microsoft hadn't had
>an OS to run the system on, in all likelihood, the use "critical mass"
>required
>to lower the prices down to the current levels, and raise the performance
>to these current levels, would not have existed. I'm not saying Gates
>invented DOS (he didn't); I'm not saying that he invented the killer
>app(again,
>he didn't. Visicalc did); I'm not saying he invented the PC(IBM, Intel,
>etc.).
>But his company was critical in those early stages. Without him, we might
>be
>using TR-DOS, CP/M, or some other legacy OS as the "mainstream" OS, and
>saturation
>would be a lot less.
>
>Just to let you know, though, Microsoft wasn't always the world conquering,
>arrogant company they became. I once bought a copy of Microsoft Multiplan
>for the TI 99/4A back in 1983, worked great, was widely supported on many
>non MS platforms, etc. I was still using it regularly until 1990, when I
>got
>a copy of Lotus 1-2-3 to replace it.
>
>They once cared about other OSes. They simply got too big.
>
>Bill Ward
>
>
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