Roy Schestowitz wrote:
> Praising Microsoft - and attacked by wolves
>
> ,----[ Snippets ]
> | "That you can use the word 'virtue' in the same sentence as 'Microsoft'
> | is clear indication that you haven't a clue. Then again, you do write
> | for Fortune, so your alliance no doubt leans toward corporations and
> | shareholders rather than users," wrote Walter Bazzini, whose Web
> | site, perhaps revealingly, is entitled "Misanthrope Manor."
> |
> | "You sound as if you're suffering from 'Stockholm Syndrome,'" wrote
> | Ken Davies. "Microsoft has actually set all of us back by years and
> | possibly by decades."
I'm going to pay devil's advocate here (literally?:D).
The author is poorly informed, but the key contribution which Microsoft
DOES deserve credit for, is making Windows so user friendly that the PC
market grew from about 100 million to nearly 1 billion in less than 10
years.
Microsoft made it possible for many different vendors to produce
compatible equipment. It started as "IBM Compatibility", but when IBM
tried to change the rules with MicroChannel and refused to document the
32 bit pins, Microsoft established hardware standards for MS-DOS and
Windows that were based on established hardware standards. It was only
a few years later that Microsoft changed the rules with PCI, and forced
the OEMs to use cryptic codes which only Microsoft had fully
catalogued.
Microsoft made the PC a commodoty. With no premium features, and no
way to effectively demonstrate and show off those features, the prices
of PCs collapsed, falling from nearly $4,000 for a brand new Windows
3.1 PC to as little as $400 for a machine with Windows XP. I guess the
OEMs think this is a good thing, because they don't seem willing to
offer an alternative that gives them the opportunity to provide product
differentiation (like Linux, UnixWare, Solaris).
> | "Your painfully revisionist history makes you sound like one of
> | the 20-something journalists who wasn't actually around since the 80s,"
> | wrote Norman Gilmore, who really knows how to hurt a guy.
Microsoft has spent $billions promoting itself (about $4 billion a year
in direct advertizing), and uses that money to buy good press coverage.
Most people haven't read trade journals for the last 30 years, reading
the original reports of how this arrogant Geek named Bill Gates
insulted every participant at the first national computer festival, by
calling them a bunch of "Pirates and thieves". They haven't read the
day-by-day reports and testimony, in which Gates and other top
Microsoft executives admit to criminal acts, only to have the case
settled. You really had to be a a techno-geek to read most of those.
Let's face it, infoworld, ComputerWeek, and ComputerWorld just don't
have anywhere near as large a readership as Time, Newsweek, or Business
Week, all of whom gave Microsoft favorable coverage until the DOJ went
after them in a very public way.
Up until then, it was just a paragraph or two to cover the filings and
later, the settlements.
> | "Gee, I thought ARPA funded the research leading to TCP/IP, Tim
> | Berners-Lee invented the Web, and Marc Andreessen led the creation of
> | the graphical browser at [the University of Illinois]. I thought Apple
> | started the personal computing revolution, Xerox invented graphical
> | interfaces and IBM invented the PC. Microsoft BASIC - oh yeah, a
> | language invented at Dartmouth by Kemeny and Kurtz. MS-DOS? Tim
> | Patterson wrote what became MS-DOS, itself a CP/M clone.
And perhaps THIS is why the hackers and contributors who supported PCs
back in the 1970s and 1980s are supporting Linux and OSS in the 1990s
and 21st century.
Bill Gates plays RISK, a game where you form alliances to help you wipe
out one opponent, then betray them by forming an alliance with another
opponent, until you have the strength to wipe out your final opponent
who has depleted his resources trying to help you finish off the next
to last opponent.
This is also how Microsoft does business.
But people still do business with them.
Microsoft is even ready to betray the PC industry itself, with
Xbox/360.
> http://biz.yahoo.com/hftn/060901/090106_fastforward_microsoft_fortune.html?.v=1
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