Because of all the above reasons why MS protects its monopoly unfairly. Also, because Linux doesn't waste money on advertising, helping it remain free.
Oh gee, we're in a circular argument here.
Great contribution, well done.
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Some M$ history...
- Thread starter PeterCH
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Because of all the above reasons why MS protects its monopoly unfairly. Also, because Linux doesn't waste money on advertising, helping it remain free.
Oh gee, we're in a circular argument here.
Great contribution, well done.
RoosTa
Expert Member
And how is that MS' fault? Linux had a choice to remain free, but now that Windows is 'whooping ass', Linux boys are crying foul because of their short comings.
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You're grasping at straws here.
RoosTa
Expert Member
Anyways, thanks for the entertainment.
I am a consumer and I'm thankful I have a freedom of choice.
Sackboy
Executive Member
Not forgetting that users are returning Linux netbooks in numbers in exchange for Windows.
I think we can agree on that.
How is this relevant?
Sackboy
Executive Member
On the Tassidar 'wiki & blogs are proof' scale, probably not very.
Arthur
Honorary Master
I'm not going to wade into the thick of battle (disclosure: I'm a former product manager at IBM for OS/2 and PS/2, and later an executive at Microsoft, retired 12 years ago, so I know this first hand from the inside in both companies), but there are some background facts easily verified by knowledgable independent experts:
1) Microsoft did not kill OS/2 with Win95 (cf PeterCH) or anything else. OS/2 was an equal JV between Microsoft and IBM, and Microsoft (from billg down) was deeply committed to OS/2 as the future OS for PCs. The OS/2 story is actually quite complex, and I can relate it from both sides. Fact: The JV allocated IBM primary responsibility for developing OS/2 1.x (16-bit, for 286), and OS/2 2.x (for a 386 subset but also MVDM); Microsoft had primary responsibility for OS/2 3.x, which fully exploited the 386 instruction set. When the JV was ended , IBM continued to develop OS/2 2.0 into Warp, and Microsoft continued to develop OS/2 3.0 but renamed it Windows NT because the primary API set was Win32. Windows NT evolved into Windows 2000, which evolved into Windows XP. Win95 was based on DOS+Windows architecture, which as far back as 1984 Microsoft had widely and universally said was no longer up to the emerging demands of PCs.
2) No hardware vendor is 'forced' or 'pressured' into OEM agreements for Windows or anything else - by market forces perhaps, but empathically not by Microsoft! Hardware vendors know that people don't buy PCs, they buy platforms to run apps, and Windows apps are the most widely available. So they do their best to enable that out of the box. If you don't like Windows OEMd on your hardware, speak to the right people at your hardware vendor. Similarly, if you don't like them including a particular brand of say hard disk, or optical media in their hardware, speak to them - those are also OEMd by the hardware vendors. It is not Microsoft that 'forces' hardwar vendors to OEM - it is the hardware vendors that beat a path to MSFT's door requesting OEM deals to include in their hardware. They get super discounts because they agree that OEMd Windows is part of the total system spec and not transferable to other machines; they also agree to do first level installation and configuration support.
3) Microsoft includes Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player in Windows and it is immoral and unjust to use the police to force Microsoft to include competitor products or links to competitor products. Many years ago these used to be be separate applications, and many third party companies charged users for their apps. When Microsoft released a free media player and later included it in Windows, several other media-player vendors sued Microsoft and lobbied governments to stop Microsoft from bundling it at no extra cost in Windows. In several geographies they found a sympathetic ear with competition authorities and Microsoft was found guilty of anti-competitive practices - this despite the fact that end users benefited more from Microsoft's practice. The same happened again with Internet Explorer. The morality of this anti-trust action depends on your politics, economics and the moral principles that underpin them, but that's another debate. In my view, these findings are profoundly immoral and unjust (though legal), but they are used today as evidence that Microsoft is predatory, unethical, anti-competitive and immoral. I can argue it in another forum, but in my view nothing could be further from the truth - hand on heart, I have never ever seen or heard anything inside Microsoft even remotely questionable from an ethical viewpoint.
4) Perhaps the most ardent Mac fans outside Apple are inside Microsoft. This is not understood by Appleistas, because they see Windows as The Enemy, and Everything Windows Must Be Implacably Opposed. Remember, Microsoft's first GUI app was developed for the Macintosh (Excel) and only later ported to Windows.
To PeterCH: There is a subtle but all-important moral difference between coercive monopolies protected and entrenched by governments and laws (which Adam Smith opposed), and de facto market dominance (which he did not). Until recently, Telkom was an example of a coercive monopoly - they were the only people who could legally provide fixed line telcommunications services in SA. If you tried your own, the police would call on you. There are no police protecting Microsoft's dominance, which was earned through immense hard work by some of the smartest and hardest-working people of the late 20th century. It is fragile, tentative, and always vulnerable to all the vagaries of the market and technology. Yes, laws can say what they want, but the real question is the morality behind it, and in that respect I will defend Microsoft's record. The cynic will of course say that's only to be expected from a former MSFT exec, but I speak as a human being with detailed inside knowledge. I have never been afraid to oppose injustice wherever it is found, and have the scars to show for it.
1) Microsoft did not kill OS/2 with Win95 (cf PeterCH) or anything else. OS/2 was an equal JV between Microsoft and IBM, and Microsoft (from billg down) was deeply committed to OS/2 as the future OS for PCs. The OS/2 story is actually quite complex, and I can relate it from both sides. Fact: The JV allocated IBM primary responsibility for developing OS/2 1.x (16-bit, for 286), and OS/2 2.x (for a 386 subset but also MVDM); Microsoft had primary responsibility for OS/2 3.x, which fully exploited the 386 instruction set. When the JV was ended , IBM continued to develop OS/2 2.0 into Warp, and Microsoft continued to develop OS/2 3.0 but renamed it Windows NT because the primary API set was Win32. Windows NT evolved into Windows 2000, which evolved into Windows XP. Win95 was based on DOS+Windows architecture, which as far back as 1984 Microsoft had widely and universally said was no longer up to the emerging demands of PCs.
2) No hardware vendor is 'forced' or 'pressured' into OEM agreements for Windows or anything else - by market forces perhaps, but empathically not by Microsoft! Hardware vendors know that people don't buy PCs, they buy platforms to run apps, and Windows apps are the most widely available. So they do their best to enable that out of the box. If you don't like Windows OEMd on your hardware, speak to the right people at your hardware vendor. Similarly, if you don't like them including a particular brand of say hard disk, or optical media in their hardware, speak to them - those are also OEMd by the hardware vendors. It is not Microsoft that 'forces' hardwar vendors to OEM - it is the hardware vendors that beat a path to MSFT's door requesting OEM deals to include in their hardware. They get super discounts because they agree that OEMd Windows is part of the total system spec and not transferable to other machines; they also agree to do first level installation and configuration support.
3) Microsoft includes Internet Explorer and Windows Media Player in Windows and it is immoral and unjust to use the police to force Microsoft to include competitor products or links to competitor products. Many years ago these used to be be separate applications, and many third party companies charged users for their apps. When Microsoft released a free media player and later included it in Windows, several other media-player vendors sued Microsoft and lobbied governments to stop Microsoft from bundling it at no extra cost in Windows. In several geographies they found a sympathetic ear with competition authorities and Microsoft was found guilty of anti-competitive practices - this despite the fact that end users benefited more from Microsoft's practice. The same happened again with Internet Explorer. The morality of this anti-trust action depends on your politics, economics and the moral principles that underpin them, but that's another debate. In my view, these findings are profoundly immoral and unjust (though legal), but they are used today as evidence that Microsoft is predatory, unethical, anti-competitive and immoral. I can argue it in another forum, but in my view nothing could be further from the truth - hand on heart, I have never ever seen or heard anything inside Microsoft even remotely questionable from an ethical viewpoint.
4) Perhaps the most ardent Mac fans outside Apple are inside Microsoft. This is not understood by Appleistas, because they see Windows as The Enemy, and Everything Windows Must Be Implacably Opposed. Remember, Microsoft's first GUI app was developed for the Macintosh (Excel) and only later ported to Windows.
To PeterCH: There is a subtle but all-important moral difference between coercive monopolies protected and entrenched by governments and laws (which Adam Smith opposed), and de facto market dominance (which he did not). Until recently, Telkom was an example of a coercive monopoly - they were the only people who could legally provide fixed line telcommunications services in SA. If you tried your own, the police would call on you. There are no police protecting Microsoft's dominance, which was earned through immense hard work by some of the smartest and hardest-working people of the late 20th century. It is fragile, tentative, and always vulnerable to all the vagaries of the market and technology. Yes, laws can say what they want, but the real question is the morality behind it, and in that respect I will defend Microsoft's record. The cynic will of course say that's only to be expected from a former MSFT exec, but I speak as a human being with detailed inside knowledge. I have never been afraid to oppose injustice wherever it is found, and have the scars to show for it.
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I am Penguin
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Well presented. Thanks for the clarity and facts.
We must understand that this thread was started just for fanboi barter.
rwenzori
Honorary Master
Referring to the first post, and having lived through the advent of the PC, maybe a different perspective:
Around 1981 or so every man and his dog were making "microcomputers". The ones used in business mostly were either Apple ][s, Commodore Pets, or CP/M variants. The BIG THING was the spreadsheet and Visicalc was the king.
On the main "computer" side ( micros were considered toys ) IBM was the ruler of the roost. "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" was the saying, and IBM had some MONSTER market share. Yes, there were the Univacs, the Burroughs, the NCRs, the ICLs, but it took a very brave and determined "DP Manager" as they were called to buy one of those. In short, IBM ruled the roost much as MS does today, and were complete and utter bastards. If the DP Manager wanted something not-IBM, the IBM bigwigs would personally contact the company chairman and spread serious FUD. DP Managers even got fired for being flaky and wanting something else. Mainframes and minis were big money too - all proprietary and all expensive.
IBM then made its PC - it arrived here about 1983 IIRC, and the "micro" became a "PC" and got respectable. Apple got sidelined, and pulled out of SA at the time of the first Mac, and so were mostly pretty small fish, here anyway.
MS, with their sharing agreement i.r.o. MS-DOS and PC-DOS with IBM started their big growth. And it was like watching the little guy getting stronger and stronger, at the expense of those greedy bastards at IBM. The world was happy - IBM started losing their dominance, and the face of computing started to change forever. MS were the hero - mine certainly.
Now, MS are in much the position that IBM were in, and are the greedy bastards, but the world changes and cycles, and their time will come.
Just some ramblings from way back.
Around 1981 or so every man and his dog were making "microcomputers". The ones used in business mostly were either Apple ][s, Commodore Pets, or CP/M variants. The BIG THING was the spreadsheet and Visicalc was the king.
On the main "computer" side ( micros were considered toys ) IBM was the ruler of the roost. "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM" was the saying, and IBM had some MONSTER market share. Yes, there were the Univacs, the Burroughs, the NCRs, the ICLs, but it took a very brave and determined "DP Manager" as they were called to buy one of those. In short, IBM ruled the roost much as MS does today, and were complete and utter bastards. If the DP Manager wanted something not-IBM, the IBM bigwigs would personally contact the company chairman and spread serious FUD. DP Managers even got fired for being flaky and wanting something else. Mainframes and minis were big money too - all proprietary and all expensive.
IBM then made its PC - it arrived here about 1983 IIRC, and the "micro" became a "PC" and got respectable. Apple got sidelined, and pulled out of SA at the time of the first Mac, and so were mostly pretty small fish, here anyway.
MS, with their sharing agreement i.r.o. MS-DOS and PC-DOS with IBM started their big growth. And it was like watching the little guy getting stronger and stronger, at the expense of those greedy bastards at IBM. The world was happy - IBM started losing their dominance, and the face of computing started to change forever. MS were the hero - mine certainly.
Now, MS are in much the position that IBM were in, and are the greedy bastards, but the world changes and cycles, and their time will come.
Just some ramblings from way back.
Very well put Arthur. Microsoft may become a victim of its own success, due to political and social pressure and also just because the nature of the beast changes, but this constant anti-MS vitriol just because they were actually successful really irks me.
Yes, MS might be/may become powerful enough to be to the detriment of consumers (that being the operative word), but you cannot hate them just because they did their business so well that they own 95%+ of the market. As a matter of fact you have to respect that.
I never understand how people fail to understand that you need a simple GUI like Windows to get the masses to use computers. Yes, there may be technical problems, yes there may be cosmetics that hide issues, but no, it doesn't matter - as long as the consumer likes it. And no, the consumer will never be happy to have to enter command line instructions to get his/her bluetooth to work on a new netbook.
And, if there are two OS'es with the same eye candy GUI then the one with the best marketing will win. No, not the one with the most stable kernel (or whatever...), not the one whose developers want to save the North-African fruit fly from distinction, not the one that feel that profit is evil - the one with the best marketing will win. It's called business, not philanthropy.
I read that it ran well. That was in review magazines of the time.
People were raving about it, like they're raving about 7 now.
At work on WORKSTATIONS. I said AT HOME. The first NT to appear at home was XP. Prior to that it was the dos shell called Win9x. Come on Claymore,
I'm not dense. I know what I'm talking about.
OS/2 I read was superior to Win95 in the kernel and have virtually no 16bit elements. It was way above Win95. Win95 was an improvement over 3.11 but
when one app died your whole system became unstable.
Anyhow M$ killed off OS/2 by pretending to work on it while developing NT
and also first releasing office for OS/2 then dropping support entirely. M$ did a double whammy by killing OS/2 and effectively killing Lotus and WP and pushing MS OFFICE ahead - also using some undocumented calls and so on, it was deception central.
At the end we had a Word Processor which couldn't even copy/paste a block of text more than 2 pages without messing up the formatting - early Word versions until late 90s.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/the_company_file/368660.stm
Yeah Right...which is why MS was told this by the US DOJ:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9502E5D71739F93AA15757C0A9669C8B63
http://usvms.gpo.gov/ms-conclusions.html
Right Arthur, ....
http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases/f1300/1330.htm
You heard about how MS stole the code for Quicktime from the company which wrote it for Apple because the talented people at MS were incapable of writing an efficient Video for Windows product?
he lawsuit "Apple Computer v. San Francisco Canyon Co.", filed on December 6, 1994, alleged that the San Francisco Canyon Company used some of the code developed under contract to Apple, in their additions to Video for Windows. Apple expanded the lawsuit to include Intel and Microsoft on February 10, 1995, alleging that Microsoft and Intel knowingly used the software company to aid them in stealing several thousand lines of Apple's QuickTime code in their effort to improve the performance of Video for Windows.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Francisco_Canyon_Company
The net effect is the same. If you assimilate and kill competition like this :
http://www.maxframe.com/DR/Info/fullstory/ca_sues_ms.html
you are guilty of stifling innovation and everything else I've said is true,
you can hit with a velvet hammer but it's still a hard hit, you don't need a Soviet Gulag to threaten people. Oh well at the end we have a massive AntiVirus industry because MS can't even make an operating system or suite of applications or a browser which doesn't load viruses by default.
Isn't Internet Explorer an UNSAFE browser compared to FireFox, Opera and even the old Netscape? Even Google is crying foul.
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article5802104.ece
Why did GWB reduce the damages against Microsoft?
Political influence and lobbying by MS.
I've experienced this myself. In 1998 I could not buy a computer without having to pay for OEM Windows. No-one would sell me a new machine where I could for example put my own DR-DOS or even OS/2. It was simply impossible to buy a new machine without Win98 OEM. Anyway that's what the techs told me too.
Arthur, why is Windows so full of security flaws and holes, such as previews which automatically execute code?
Why no such issues on Linux, Unix and Mac OSX machines?
Why is IE the least safe browser?
MS integration of IE into various subsystems of Windows (and the integration was there for business reasons) causes IE to be less safe, it's a target for hackers. Nice, thank you M$.
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Linux-and-Open-Source/Firefox-Still-Tops-IE-for-Browser-Security/
Arthur, I don't work at IT. But if individuals in my profession act the way these guys acted, they'd be stricken from the registry. Maybe we're from different worlds, but I can't ethically reconcile M$ behaviour, knowing well that if I had a competing Operating System at that time, no matter how good, I could never compete - unless I had Billions of Dollars to throw at OEMs to counter M$. Where's the choice? Where's AmiPro, where's WordPerfect or WordStar? Why the useless, endless upgrade cycles? I can understand perhaps that you owe you loyalty to M$ being an ex employee and having earned money there - but for someone from the outside who had to use these products and pay large amounts of money - I'm not impressed. Socialist Command Economies behind the Curtain were'nt always trigger/cop happy either, they would also TAX you to heck or force you to join various boards which was impossible if you wanted to run a private business. Anyway thanks for a civil talk.
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More at: http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/10/23/13219/110
and
"He Who Controls the Bootloader. BYTE, August 27, 2001. http://www.byte.com/documents/s=1115/byt20010824s0001/
Tassidar mentions it clearly also here:
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showpost.php?p=2585337&postcount=75
and
Can any MS-abuse-apologist please refute this:
http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/showpost.php?p=2569463&postcount=29
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I am Penguin
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More ANTI Microsoft FUD. There are many articles to the contrary. But who cares, enjoy yourself. Windows7 >>>>>> Beter than any OSX or XP. Try it. Stop living in your past!
Do you even know what the DOJ is? You're a child aren't you? COURT VERDICTS are not FUD. Do you even know what FUD means? What are you babbling about?
Anyway enjoy your gamez and Blurays.
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Is this the argument of someone who is clearly beaten?
You say there are many articles to the contrary, yet you don't back up your claim, either with logic or fact.
What you are doing is called burying your head in the sand, because the simple, easy-to-understand world that you think that you live in is being shattered, and it frightens you.
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