superdezign wrote:As much as we all like to diss Microsoft, they've done a lot for the computer industry, just like IBM, Intel, and nVidia.
From a raw economics point of view, there is a strong argument to be made that they've done more harm to the industry than benefit.
They've forced out of market several serious competitors - even when the market, users, and their own department heads admitted they had inferior products (Netscape, Novell networking). Thats a net market harm, going against the needs of users, and its a trend they've continued.
superdezign wrote:They all face a lot of competition, but they are a part of the reason that their competition is even successful.
In fact, the exact opposite is true - they were only driven to be competitive by their competition, and chose not to do so UNTIL forced to do so by their rivals. They didn't want IE to have any substantial functionality, but Netscape forced them to. They didn't want to update Internet Explorer, until Firefox (and others!) forced them to lose users due to stagnation. In many cases, their competition has had to work many times harder to compete (bundling), and work harder to make things better for users (interoperability).
superdezign wrote:If it weren't for them, there would be no market to compete within, anyway.
This presumes computers would have never been successful and wide-spread if it weren't for Microsoft, which is really amusing to me. If Microsoft hadn't provided a defacto monopoly, do you really doubt that users would be using computers for the majority of their work today?
Put another way, imagine Windows stopped working tomorrow, and Microsoft was out of business. Do you really think everyone would stop using computers?
No. Thats not a construction of Microsoft, thats users finding value in computing. Microsoft was in the right place, at the right time, and did every possible wrong thing to maximize the return on that luck - including breaking the law, manipulating markets, and destroying competitors.
superdezign wrote:The majority of software is programmed for Windows because the majority of customers have Windows.
Once upon a time, that wasn't true, and yet, Microsoft got in that position. How? By listening to users first, and developers second. Once they got the dominant market share, then they started applying pressure to developers of competitive products.
The majority of software is programmed for Windows due to a inertia and a long-tail response to a company listening to customers.. over a decade ago.
superdezign wrote:Nothing is perfect, but Windows is successful. There's no denying that, ever.
I completely disagree. Windows, the operating system, is definitely not successful by a number of criteria. It is exceptionally poor at managing memory, providing services to users, preventing security disasters, and any number of other issues. It provides an extremely poorly documented development environment where if you make a truly successful product, they will likely crush you (Novell, Netscape, soon anti-virus vendors). It even destroys choice by eliminating competitors through bundling, and predatory monopoly practices.
From a software point of view, and from an economics point of view, Windows is a travesty. Now, if you want to speak to Marketing, sure, I'll agree that its successful. But then again, marketing by definition is convincing you that something is good - regardless of whether it is or not.
