Re: Do we really offer the future?

[Wols Lists]

On 20/04/15 15:54, Kieren MacMillan wrote:
> Some say that Microsoft obtained its original OS dominance (which at one 
> point was approaching 95%) specifically by giving the priority to non-users: 
> it wilfully allowed (or even secretly supported) the proliferation of pirated 
> copies of early Windows versions, in order to take the beachhead. Whether or 
> not they properly managed that dominance in the following decades is a 
> different debate.

And by indulging in anti-competitive practices that European businesses
wouldn't even dream of ... maybe mild by the Robber Baron practices of
American Business in the late 1800s, but bad enough ...

Fake error messages. (Windows wouldn't run on DR-Dos)

Deliberate bugs aimed at crashing competitors' products. (This did in
both Lotus and WordPerfect.)

Bundling to close off competitors' access to markets. (Windows
+DOS was cheaper than either Windows or DOS on their own PROVIDED you
agreed to pay for a copy for every computer you sold.)

Mind you, one thing they did do well was to aim at the "occasional
user". Unfortunately, this disadvantages the professional user and leads
to the syndrome where everyone thinks they're an expert, as was
mentioned earlier ...

Coupled with a willingness to ship buggy code (unfortunately "early to
market" has a tendency to do better than "actually does the job
properly"), this enabled them to pretty much take over the market.

Cheers,
Wol