Quote:
Originally Posted by delphidb96
No, he wasn't saying anything of the sort. I believe the point he was making was that Microsoft has - and I was witness to some of this - used it's OS clout to destroy application developers. Thus, the fact that MacOS and Linux are on the rise is directly attributable to the FUD tactics and greed of Microsoft.
Derek
|
IIRC, the two big problems that originally got Msft in trouble with the Clinton administration DOJ was, 1) they wouldn't let PC makers change the appearance of the main Windows screen (customers could do it, of course) or replace IE with Netscape, and 2) they swung deals with the big PC makers that gave very low license fees if the PC maker paid the fee for every PC they shipped regardless of whether Windows was included or not. Remember, Netscape was the first company to give away their browser... and found out that you don't want to get in a price war with a much richer competitor. Microsoft started giving away IE, and that was the death knell for Netscape... plus the fact that IE got better after IE4 while Netscape got worse after v4.
Re Msft using its clout to destroy apps developers... who? Lotus? Borland? Wordperfect? Lotus died because 1-2-3 for Windows sucked. Borland died when its apps started to suck... or be too expensive. Wordperfect was as hard to use on Windows as it was on a PC (and I was a Wordperfect fan) plus it didn't work as well as Word. I can tell you that Msft
begged Lotus, Ashton-Tate, and Wordperfect to port their MS-DOS apps to Windows back in the late '80s, more than a year before Win 3.0 shipped... and they were rebuffed. These guys didn't think Windows 3.0 would amount to a hill of beans... oops!
I can also tell you, from direct experience, how Apple is much more of a monopolistic ba$tard of a company that Microsoft ever was... just not as successful. If you wrote an OS utility that sold well, Apple would put it in the next version of MacOS. The OS and hardware were closed systems and Apple would sue if you came up with a great product that required some reverse engineering (they wouldn't give you the help either).
I'm a huge Unix fan. Linux is pretty cool, too. Linux makes a great server, but not a desktop operating system for the average corporate worker. MacOS is becoming another story. Apple's porting this to the Intel architecture is a real threat to Windows. I'm waiting for Apple to sell MacOS to other PC makers, but I'm not holding my breath; Apple likes charging way too much for their PCs. Talk about greedy! :-)
Business is rough. That's why it's business. Survival of the fittest and all that. Trust me, no one at Apple gets all teary-eyed when Microsoft stumbles... and they never have, either.
None of this, of course, justifies pirating any work put out by either company, or by any company.