Microsoft Hatred FAQ

[Rhino]

"Jeroen Wenting" <jwenting at hornet dot demon dot nl> wrote in message
news:11l16dst501kjdd at corp.supernews.com...
>
> >>
> >>    Q: Microsoft's Operating System is used over 90% of PCs. If that's
> >>not monopoly, i don't know what is.
> >
> > They got where they are  by CHEATING.  That is why they are evil, not
> > because they have a large market share.
>
> no, they got their by clever marketing and generally having a product that
> was easier to use for the average user than anything the competition made
> and a lot more powerful than other products created for their main target
> market.
>
> Microsoft isn't evil, they're not a monopoly either.
> If they were a monopoly they'd have 100% of the market and there'd be no
> other software manufacturers at all.
> Prices would be far far higher than they are today, like they were back in
> the days before Microsoft started competing with the likes of Ashton Tate
> and WordPerfect corporation by offering similar products at 20% the price
> (which is the real reason they got to be top dog, they delivered a working
> product for a fraction of the price their competition did, and the
> competition couldn't drop their prices that much and remain profitable).
>
> Without Microsoft 90% of us would never have seen a computer more powerful
> than a ZX-81 and 90% of the rest of us would never have used only dumb
> mainframe terminals.

> IBM's prediction that there would be 5 computers (not counting game
> computers like the Comodores and Spectrums) by 2000 would likely have come
> true.
>

I'd be VERY surprised if IBM predicted that there would be only 5 COMPUTERS
in *2000* - perhaps you mean 5 *manufacturers* of computers? - unless the
prediction was made a VERY long time ago. I think you are giving a
badly-mangled version of something I saw when I worked at IBM.

 About 10 years ago, when I was working at IBM, there was an employee
newsletter circulated commemorating the death of Thomas J. Watson Jr., a
former CEO of IBM. They cited an old interview with him in which he had
predicted that the world wide market for computers would be 3 in the next
year; in other words, he expected IBM to sell three of their computers in
that year. However, he was not making this prediction in or for the year
2000; the interview had taken place just after World War II - 1946 perhaps -
and was for the next year. I wasn't born then but, from what I recall about
computer history, selling 3 Eniacs (or whatever model they were making that
year) isn't too far out of line with what actually happened.

Of course, we are talking about a time when computers were absolutely
immense, ran on vacuum tubes (the transistor hadn't been invented yet) and
filled very large rooms - and yet probably had less computing power than the
average microwave oven you can buy today. Only very large companies or
national governments would want or need a computer in those days. Everyone
else was still using typewriters - which was IBM's bread and butter in those
days - for their business needs.

Rhino