What Would The World Be Like Without Microsoft? 1054
CanadianMikey asks: "The debate with the business side of computing rages on about the validity of Open Source. Is it good or bad? What is the future of computing? Could it have been different, and where will the 21st century take us? Is Microsoft just the big nail that always gets hammered first and will someone step in to take their place when they are finally taken down?
If Microsoft were to close up shop, who do the readers of Slashdot think would be tomorrow's Microsoft? What about the forgotten windows?"
If Windows were to diappear (Score:4, Interesting)
More like... (Score:2, Interesting)
Now THATS something I'd like to know.
Less microsoft means... (Score:3, Interesting)
more people will develop open source software, which means
more and better open source software
The downside would be that not 'everyone' can use a PC, the way they can today, since MS Windows is by far the most newbie-friendly operating system availible for PC.
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Without Microsoft? (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple would have risen much more strongly, as well as console/PC makers like Atari and Commodore. We'd probably see computers with more advanced graphics systems, but with less memory and less hard disk space as most media would be self-contained cartridges. Which is an interesting idea, that we wouldn't have software available separate from a cartridge. We would have to have the physical cart to plug into the slot array on our PCs to enable software, but it would also be easier to move software from one machine to another as well as conserve primary disk space as documents could be saved directly onto the cartridge.
We wouldn't have the powerful CPUs that we have now, we'd probably be a couple generations behind as the hardware demands of the software would be much lower. Hard disks would be small, memory would be low, and video screens would be optimized to view on both TV and computer monitors. Digital TVs that could display computer video output at high resolutions would be the standard as the console/PCs would have merged the computer into a central position in the home entertainment cabinet.
Many companies would only just now be moving their businesses to computerized systems. Until now, computers would have been viewed as toys. Without Microsoft, the concept of a computer for business would be unthinkable except for large institutions, so many smaller accounting firms, warehouses, and mom'n'pop stores would still be doing their paperwork by hand.
In short, the computer as a personal entertainment device would be much more ingrained in our culture, but the computer as a business tool would only be catching on. The prices of "serious" personal computers useful for business purposes would still be astronomical and software would be expensive to purchase.
Re:If Windows were to diappear (Score:3, Interesting)
without microsoft... (Score:5, Interesting)
Gary Kildale died in a plane crash and never got the chance to give CP/M to IBM. Without Microsoft getting DOS for IBM, Intel never would have gained the marketshare. Linus would not have been hacking on the 386 and needing badly to break the confines of what he had available. Therefor, the likelihood of Linux existing today would be significantly lower. It may not have happened. You might still be waiting for HURD (or, more likely, using BSD). Hell, Intel woulde never have gotten so popular. You all might all be on using Macintoshes right now like I am.
Microsoft's products might suck, but they made Intel hardware the comodoty that it is today in order that you can afford to tinker with Linux or whatever it is you want to do.
Re:If Windows were to diappear (Score:4, Interesting)
Not this inexpensive x86 machine.
Say hello to my little friend...
If Microsoft were to vanish ... (Score:3, Interesting)
If Microsoft were to vanish, it would become very difficult to maintain or improve their closed, proprietary software. If their softwear wer to vanish along wioth them, it would be utter disaster for a good while until everything could be pieced back together with other softwear.
Some of us would only have secondary effects felt because others use Microsoft softwear. For example none of my computers have any Microsoft softwear installed, and I try to ensure it remains that way.
A related question is "Would I *like* Microsoft to disappear."
No, I wouldn't. I'd very much like for them to be broken into independent, managable-sized pieces ("bite sized chunks"), as that wouild likely help innovation and pricing by making it possible for others to compete without suddenly vanishing away
--
Tomas
"But o beamish nephew, beware of the day
If your snark be a boojum for then,
you will softly and suddenly vanish away
and never be met with again." (Lewis Carrol)
Re:Standards (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually, they could. Government went after MS and found them guilty. New President and suddenly we let the company go with only simple agreement and monitoring that shows MS is still disobeying the agreement. Things can always get worse with the feds in control.
Without Microsoft (Score:2, Interesting)
People often complain about how buggy and how full of security holes. Bugs are what occur when you make something that is very large and very complex. People want stuff to be easy to use, which means advanced programming, which in turn results in bugs. As for security holes. This is a subject that really bugs me. The people that tend to be the most critical of microsoft for their numerous security holes (which also result from having such a complex system), also tend to be the ones that like to exploit them. Which is a damn hipocracy if you ask me. Security holes exist, they always have, they always will, and there is nothing whatsoever that you, I or Mr. Gates can do to change that. The problem isn't the security holes, it's the fact that there are people that exploit them. And then those innocent people who don't exploit them will get mad at Microsoft, effectively siding with those malicious jerks who exploit the holes. People should be supportive of Microsoft to fix the holes and bugs, while denouncing the jerks, letting them know that they are neither cool nor respected. Okay.. I went quite a bit off subject. But essentially I'm saying that Microsoft has been a *good thing*. And while whether or not they do or will continue to be is up for debate, they have been. And I will always chear on a nobody that can go from being nothing to the world's most powerful corperation and only a decade or two's time.
Rufus Dark
Re: One Word (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft is Morgoth (Score:1, Interesting)
Without Microsoft, there would be no wind in the sails of the FOSS movement. I think they're kind of a stage rocket... don't need that impetus any more, but it was definitely necessary.
Tolkien hated allegory. Wonder how he felt about allusion. Either way I'm sure he'd hate this post.
x86 machines would not exist. (Score:5, Interesting)
On the other hand, we almost certainly wouldn't see OS X in the form its in-- FreeBSD almost certainly wouldn't exist. Linux _might_ exist, in some strange Yellow Dog format, but I have no doubt that Apple would be the marketshare leader.
The better question is: what sort of power would computers of today have, if Microsoft didn't exist? Other than gameplay, Office and Windows are the two biggest reasons that Intel/AMD/etc make faster processors. Chances are really good that Apple and Motorola machines wouldn't be as fast as they are today, because there'd be no speed gap to close up.
My hypothesis: Sun on the server side, Apple on the client side, and small offerings from companies like Be, or Amiga, or other nontraditional platforms. (NeXT?)
One of two situaions (Score:3, Interesting)
2) We'd have two or more incompatible camps duking it out, probably at the stratification of the market along usage lines. If you did X, you'd use system A since it would be the ONLY system that did that well, if you did Y, you'd use system B, etc.
It's a cycle that many industries have taken. You get divergence, sometimes dominance, and then convergence. The computer industry did diverge, I mean there was a time when it was UNIX or nothing (almost exclusively on big iron) for servers/science, DOS/Windows for bussiness and MacOS for graphics/sound. There was little crossover. Then MS moved to dominance and became viable for about everything, though not always the best option. Now I think we're seeing more convergence, slowly. Windows is getting a real worthwhile POSIX layer, many apps are being written for more than one platform, and cross platform dev tools and APIs are becoming more prevelant.
If you look at the history of other industries, you'll find this isn't an uncommon cycle, though not all of them grow to have one dominant player.
Ahhhh... the venerable old GEM (Score:3, Interesting)
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Comdex 1983 (Score:5, Interesting)
All of a sudden there was a bit of a stir, and Gates found out it was a demonstration of GEM. He wandered over and pulled one of his big poker bluffs.
Heckling the product demonstrators, he told everyone who he was, what company he represented, claimed his own company had a similar product in the works, far more developed than this beta of GEM, but his company, ethical as it was, would never dream of luring the public with a demonstration of a product what wasn't ready for market.
He then supposedly stalked back to his own exhibit, closed it down demonstratively, and proclaimed that he was leaving Comdex in protest. He traveled immediately back to Seattle.
Where he immediately convened the 'board' of MS and appointed Steve Ballmer manager of the phantom project. Ballmer started getting phone calls from the media who wanted to know what the product would be called (here Ballmer was impressively creative) and also wanted to know why it was taking so long: Gates intimated MS had been working on it for several years already in 1983.
When the 'product' finally surfaced in 1985, and looked (and performed) as poorly as it did, a few people understood: it hadn't taken that long at all.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Standards (Score:5, Interesting)
The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act added financial privacy regulations. What difference does it make to the consumer - precious little, they get a mailing once per year saying something about privacy. Like most other regulations, it's a paper chase for the financial institutions - we've got to send out those pieces of paper to stay in the good graces of the regulators.
I'm no Microsoft fanboy, but to say that the government can't make things worse is just plain silly.
Is a single roll of paper tape to blame? (Score:5, Interesting)
They made a copy, and passed it on with the admonitiion to 'be fruitful, and multiply' -- make a copy and pass it on. Bill Gates wrote a scathing letter to the community (and no doubt, swore to wreak his own revenge).
So, it's 25 years later, and he's still battling the same people that stole his reel of paper tape from that hotel room. So consider this
Re:MS Bashing (Score:3, Interesting)
What I tell them is that a person generally wouldn't buy a car, drive it constantly without checking or changing the oil, putting gas in it, or doing any maintenance at all, and then take it to the car dealership, furious, when suddenly it will no longer run for whatever reason, and say "but it was running yesterday!" Yet people do this all the time with computers.
Computers are a mechanical device and require maintenance to keep running properly. True, they are unlike cars in most other respects, but it is a helpful primer for people so clueless they think computers operate on a mix of fairy dust and moonbeams.
Re:Not in a plane crash (Score:2, Interesting)
IBM found Gates because MS was the source of BASIC. They wanted to include basic. MS offered to sell them a OS but IBM did nor want to buy (anti-trust issues) So they argeed to have MS keep the rights. Gates Mother was on the United Way board wit the Chairman of IBM who said that he knew "Mary Gates's son" and IBM would do business with his small company.
DR lost out to DOS because they were 7 months late in releasing thier PC product and cost $145 to DOS's $45.
If Redmond disappeared into a black hole tomorrow (Score:2, Interesting)
The ideal operating system is componentized, not monolythic: a microkernel, surrounded by a few standardized core API's implemented by replaceable OS components, surrounded by a larger set of services API's also implemented by replaceable OS components. That way there is no natural monopoly. What it takes are well-defined semantics for the APIs. It also takes a committee to administer upgrade discipline (anything that requires API changes requires a newly versioned module to coexist with the old module.)
The problem is that it's been impossible to move the market towards a standardized, componentized solution, since every OS has always been faced with Windows' existence. Sure enough Windows was never going to be componentized, so every other OS has been captive to the "David vs. Goliath" syndrome, or the need to build a "full solution" in order to be able to compete. But if Microsoft were to disappear, the Goliath would lay slain, and it'd take about as long for another Goliath (Apple? Linux?) to grow large enough as it would to introduce a componentized, "cooperative yet competitive" solution, the latter being much more attractive to consumers, and to producers with no realistic chance of becoming the new Goliath.
But the greatest effect of Microsoft's disappearance would be the resurrection of the software industry. There is no software industry today, no matter what Oracle, Adobe and EA tell you. It's a fraction of what it was in %-GDP terms in the 80's, and a microfraction of what it would be without MS. Simplistically put, software has been grossly underinvested in because MS deprives business plans of most of their upside. As a new software venture, you can be grossly unsuccessful, mildly unsuccessful, mildly successful, but you can never be greatly successful - if it looked like you were going to be, MS would step in and turn you into the next Netscape, by either acquiring you for pennies, or by copying your technology and leveraging their OS business to overcome any time-to-market or superior-technology advantage you might have had. That depresses the expected return of any new venture so much, that most of them go unstarted or unfunded.
This last effect alone is probably worth 100 to 1000 times what MS's continued existence is worth. In other words, if the DOJ commended the dissolution of Microsoft (probably about as likely as the black hole option, at least in this administration) it'd do economic wonders.
Re:Software Standards (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Comdex 1983 (Score:2, Interesting)
While at Microsoft today... (Score:3, Interesting)
I talked to a Microsoft engineer, and out of curiousity I asked him whether or not he uses Linux, and what he uses it for. This guy works for Microsoft Research - which publishes more white papers regarding algorithms and technology than anybody else. Essentially they're more open source with their ideas than any other community out there. Now this is a specific niche of Microsoft, and I'm not saying that MS in general is like that at all; obviously they're not.
A lot of microsoft's reputation, however, is out of date. In fact, it's downright obsolete these days. MS shares their code with quite a few people. They approach things from a monied perspective, but hell, if they didn't, a lot of us would be out of a job (and of course, not just those at MS.)
The point is, this guy who works at MS research is aware of the advantages of Linux, the advantages of Windows, and uses them accordingly. There's this huge battle being waged in the mind of geeks everywhere; for some reason a lot of us feel that Microsoft needs to -die-.
MS doesn't need to die; why anyone would want that, from a cognitive standpoint, is beyond me. MS does not hinder open source production. Open Source has its niche and it's not going away any more than MS is. Microsoft employees recognize the value of linux. Why don't open source advocates recognize the value of MS products? There's value in both Linux and Windows - understand the values of each, and you'll be far ahead of everybody else. Try to destroy either one, and you'll find it's impossible no matter how far you dedicate yourself.
At Least 10 years behind. (Score:1, Interesting)
A Different and More Interesting Place to Work (Score:1, Interesting)
What can never be lost in these sorts of discussions is the FACT that the market NEVER actually selected Microsoft for survival. Legitimate choice was pre-empted early and nothing was done to return it.
Plus, as poorly as the competition responded to Microsoft way back when, (IBM not preinstalling OS/2 and Novell with the whole WordPerfect debacle immediately leap to mind) Microsoft was never some sort of innocent party, just doing the smart thing while sitting idly by as the competition did itself in.
Had the original government action concerning Microsoft's strong-arming of OEM's, anti-competitive behavior, etc. resulted in splitting up Microsoft into Operating Systems, Languages, and Applications the IT world would be a different place today.
There were multiple, profitable competitors in each of these three areas at that time, and absent the insider advantage, Languages and Applications would have had to survive on merits.
Plus, the only means for Operating Systems to attract, "developers, developers, developers," would have been increased openness, not closing ranks to kill off competitors.
Imagine the remnants of this three-way split having to COMPETE during years of true choice among operating systems, development tools, and applications instead being able to grow fat during of years monopolistic, monocultural growth.
Guess what?
This describes TRUE market conditions.
FUD fails in a true market, and embrace and extend campaigns against market standards would not be sustainable.
Now imagine Free and Open Source development in such an environment.
Pretty big difference, huh?
Re:Standards (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes. Before building codes, people built buildings that stood and worked properly because if they didn't, they might die. New materials meant innovations meant new ways of building buildings - all without building codes. Building codes are ways for government and unions to assert control over individual builders.
Do you think the highways would work better if each one was a toll road, allowed to design to their own needs?
Again, yes, like the Dulles Greenway [dullesgreenway.com], a successfully run private toll road to Dulles Airport.
Do you think it would be better or worse for communications if ATT and Verizon each designed and developed phone technology independently of each other, meaning interoperation didn't happen?
You mean like the competition between RSS and Atom news reader formats? How long do you think the market would stand two incompatible standards before one of the two started specing in some interoperability? In any case, your point is moot - basic telephone service was set up by a monopoly (remember the break-up of AT&T, aka Ma Bell?) - wireless phone service had to interoperate with the baseline to be useful and adopted. The standard was set in place by a single company - all the others had to deal with the existing infrastructure to be picked up by the market. Look at how much fun IPv6 is having trying to be adopted and spec'd - it needs to interoperate with the existing standard or it's just another hobby platform.
the South had different guage of train tracks than the North, and it's part of what led to the cultural divide, which in turn led to the Civil War.
It was a part, but a very small part. The bigger issue was the fact that the Federal government was trying to impose its standards on the southern States, leading to the seccession of South Carolina. Train track guages was a small factor - the big problem was that Lincoln's government was trying to dictate what the States could and could not do, imposing one set of standards for radically different geographies and economies.
I disagree that one company should be in control of that standard; instead, it should be controlled by an open forum. As was the early internet...
Look it up - the early internet was controlled by the DoD under the DARPA program, one government agency dictating the standards, protocols, even the people who could connect. Even now, one corporation controls DNS, arguably the backbone of the modern internet (anyone know the IP address of slashdot.org? Thought not...)
The fact is Microsoft is involved in standards bodies and works to define and refine standards in use by everyone. Yes, MS embraces and extends, but even back in the day, compiler authors did the same to programming languages (Borland C anyone? UCSD Pascal?). Even modern BIOS manufacturers extend their products over and above the base spec. Extensions to standards lead to future extended standards - ever wonder what the world would be like with Bjarne Stroustrup's C++? How about Emacs Lisp?
Re:There would be no Open Source... (Score:3, Interesting)
[x] Strongly disagree
I believe OSS would have continued to develop regardless of the existance of microsoft. If i'm not mistaken, Linux it self was developed so one could play with a *nix type system on x86 hardware without the high cost. If this is true, then it has little to do microsoft at all, but rather something to do with the very high cost of a true blue AT&T licensed *nix.
My belief is based in part of all the free software I could get on compuserve pre 1985... many of the applications you could request the source. Also, basic code was commonly published in computer mags, which is about as open source as you can get.
Re:Without Microsoft? (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe, maybe not. This is one bit of computing history that has me stumped. MS-DOS exists because CP/M wasn't an option for IBM. Or at least wasn't an option at the time IBM needed it to be.
MS-DOS was, essentially, QDOS. QDOS existed because Digital Research was slow to produce a version of CP/M for the newer 8086 line of processors. Seattle Computer had a new line of hardware based on the 8086 and eventually created their own CP/M clone to fill the void lefted by Digital Research - QDOS. Microsoft licensed QDOS.
Oddly enough, IBM had approuched Digital Research about CP/M. However, they were not greeted with much enthusiasm (some niggling over a non-disclosure agreement). It seems that Digital did not have a version of CP/M ready. The question I have is - why not?
I disagree here. Yes - Atari and Commodore did have an early preference for cartridges. However, that mode was quickly overcome by a growing industry of software producers selling software on cassette tape and floppy disk. In short, cartridges were being out-moded. Floppy disks were catching on. And that was happening on every microcomputer platform.
I'm curious as to what you base this on. If IBM hadn't lost control of its platform, I could this this happening. But once the IBM PC became a commodity platform, competition began driving performance as hardware producers grabbed whatever edge they could - and as fast as Intel (and then later AMD and Cyrix) could provide one (and thank AMD for pushing this cycle even faster).
Now - the question would be... would Compaq been successful in starting the commodity / clone market if Microsoft hadn't been there to license MS-DOS?
I'm not so sure about the whole monitor bit. Sure - the ability to use a TV tube as a monitor was a consumer-friendly practice. A practice started by Apple. However, dedicated computer monitors weren't too uncommon even with consumer systems from Commodore and Atari. I don't see things going any differently.
First, you're giving credit to Microsoft for the IBM PC platform. IBM drove sales of the PC - by name alone.
Secondly, IBM itself was playing catch-up. They ignored the microcomputer market. That is, until the first killer app. That application was Visicalc - the dawn of the spreadsheet. Microcomputers stopped being simply hobbiest curiosities and became a tool for business. It might be
Re:Microsoft is Morgoth (Score:4, Interesting)
1) If you assume that, without Microsoft, there would be multiple competing OSes (e.g., the multitude of Unix variants in the 1980s) then just having FOSS to provide a choice wouldn't be needed. For all intents and purposes, the only alternative to Microsoft on i386 hardware is FOSS. This leads to:
2) The FOSS movement is getting support from various companies (e.g., IBM, Novell) since FOSS is the only way they can compete against Microsoft's lock-in with hardware vendors through marketing agreements. If you dig into the record of the Microsoft anti-trust case you'll find that Microsoft even had enough leverage to pressure IBM into not offering alternatives to Microsoft products (e.g., OS/2) on IBM made PCs by threatening to no longer provide IBM a price break since they weren't giving Microsoft an exclusive.
3) Kind of fall-out from item 1, above, but if you had competition in OS and applications, you wouldn't have Microsoft's monopolist pricing on buggy bloatware. Choice means the freedom to choose between different products basd on their merits. Generally, in a competitive market this means that price goes down while quality goes up.
I'm not saying that FOSS wouldn't exist without Microsoft but it would be one player among many instead of being the only alternative.
Re:Comdex 1983 (Score:2, Interesting)
More such information at Andy Hertzfeld's folklore.org [folklore.org]
Microsoft, Hardware and Open Computing (Score:3, Interesting)
What most people overlook is that Bill Gates is the Linus Trovalds of PC hardware.
Before MS, HARDWARE WAS PROPRIETARY. UNIX Machines had proprietary hardware. Macs had proprietary hardware. Mac wouldn't make IBM-compatible hardware, and IBM wouldn't make HP-compatible hardware, and specifications for some hardware for the purpose of driver-writing was not available.
Windows revolutionized this. (or rather made it possible for corps like Intel to start lobbying for standards and for concortiums to start emerging - think ISA, PCI, USB, etc).
If it weren't for Microsoft, EVERYTHING may not have been running on one unified platform. There may not have been such a boom of 3rd party hardware vendors. There wouldn't be an ATI and NVIDIA. Your IBM computer would still be using an IBM graphics chip. The PC may not have evolved as the universal platform we know it today. And Linus may not have written anything.
It's all assumptions and whatifs, but there is a good chance Linux owes its existance to Bill Gates winning the fight over Open Hardware with Apple (who still wants to sell us computers with welded hoods), IBM and whoever else competed with him in that neandarthal PC market of the 80s and early 90s.
Re:I am writing in Ada! & MS Ruminations (Score:4, Interesting)
I totally agree that Microsoft *and Intel* have retarded the state of the art by at least 15 years. There have been so many other worthwhile, efficient CPU architectures (MIPS, Alpha, 680x0) that have gone by the wayside, while the bloated hulk of x86 keeps rolling on.
I really do wonder where Linux would be today without Microsoft. I wonder why Minix didn't experience the same explosive growth. (Anyone even remember it?)
One can only hope that as we push thru the 21st century, marketing will less frequently win out over superior technology.
Re:missed the GUI? (Score:3, Interesting)
It isn't because it is "better" on any level, it is because that is what people use.
The answer depends on perspective (Score:2, Interesting)
For me, Microsoft helped to usher in the generation that went from the CLI to the GUI. Although I'm very confortable with the CLI, I prefer the GUI. Visual representation makes it easier for everyone to compute, not just the geeks and nerds.
Where would we be without Microsoft? IMHO, we'd be stuck using expensive computers with a CLI or more expensive computers with the Mac, Amiga, or some other GUI with proprietary hardware.
Of course, I could be all wrong... It's a matter of perspective.
Nahhh... microcomputers didn't depend on MS. (Score:3, Interesting)
In which case somebody would have done more or less what they did, that is, write a BASIC that'd run on an Altair, because the Altair-8800 come out before there was a Micro-Soft. Maybe Gordon Eubanks would have written CBASIC earlier. Or maybe Mountain View FORTH would've replaced it.
Instead of MSDOS and Microsoft, we'd have CP/M and Digital Research (Gary Kildall contracted for Intel, not for MS, before starting DRI), and they would have been pricier and more hardnosed (MS knew how to look friendlier back then). Would that have stopped Stallman and BSD? Not a chance... so there would have been a Unix-style OS when Intel CPUs, and hard drive densities, and DRAM densities, matured enough to support them, and sooner or later there would be a free-as-in-country Unix-style OS for commodity PCs, just-because-there's-a-Richard-and-his-ilk.
Maybe GEM would've matured enough to provide the just-enough-windowing-environment category that the 386s needed, or maybe Desqview would've gone graphic, because neither PARC nor Apple depended on the impact of MS for their existence, so the WIMP interface was inevitable.
From a 50-year retrospective, it all would have looked substantially the same if Microsoft never happened, except we'd probably all be bitching about Gary Kildall instead.
Now, Intel, on the other hand... No matter what their business ethics might be, those guys were pivotal. TI was the other first-microprocessor contender, and they didn't get it right for quite a while. Making Intel go bankrupt, say, by making them buy back all those pattern-sensitive 1101 DRAM chips, would have seriously delayed the computer technology we're so fond of.
That's my take on it, anyway.
As much as I'd hate to admit it.... (Score:2, Interesting)
Back when I started using computers, pre 1997 perhaps, I was quite the youngin' (still am) and was teaching myself how to use computers and the still growing internet. It was windows 95 that allowed me to do this, and it had the games that kept me interested in computers. I can't tell you how much having warcraft 2 on the platform helped. But games were just the gateway drug to the technology addiction that was to follow. Now Mac OS also had a port of War2, but Macs back then (and today still) are rather expensive, and I'm sure my family would not have been so keen on using one. Linux, on the other hand, is cheap (it's free!) but there's no way ten year old me would of been able to use it. Windows is the beast that allows the blend between ease-of-use and configurability, and that's what I enjoy in an operating system.
Now today, things have changed, and Operating Systems have changed too, but Linux still is a bitch to set up and use and MacOS still makes me feel dumb using it. It's Microsoft that allows me to get things done when I need it, because more often than not I can just install a program without having to do much more work than a few clicks, and have it work. That's important because I feel my time is better spent working on what I want to do, instead of updating dependancies and wondering why the fuck this make is throwing up errors. When I decide I need to tweak my computer and get it running better or faster, that's easy to do too, and I know just how to do it. I don't have to deal with Apple's shit or hard to use third party programs. It's just Windows, and as much as I'd hate to say it, sometimes it just works. Now it does come at a price, and I'd love to lose all these explorer crashes and odd little (or big) problems that using Windows presents, but until Linux moves to carry the games and starts being easy enough for me to set up, it will still remain that beast that I need to tackle. And it shouldn't be that way. When I'm using a desktop computer it shouldn't be an arduous exhausting task.
Had Microsoft not been around, most likely something would have moved to fill it's place. However I don't think that the world we're living in is too bad. I just wish that more game developers would support OpenGL and make the linux ports. That way maybe someday I'd have something to look forward to in a switch to linux.
Windowless world: Open Unix on Apple Clone (Score:2, Interesting)
Apple wouldn't have crashed and burned as soon. They would have retained more of their market share for a while longer. IBM would have more than likely had DOS written for their machine, though it wouldn't have succeeded. The alternate machine for the apple could have been anything from the DEC to NEC to perhaps still the x86, or most likely a mac clone. The only sure thing would be it would be as cheap to produce as the PC clones, were in the early days. Without an obvious alternative much more pressure would have been placed on breaking Mac's stranglehold on the hardware, this would have lead to cloning of the Mac as it had lead to cloning the PC.
Without direct competition Apple prices would be higher than they were causing more pressure to create a cheap counterpart for the OS. Without windows ripping off the interface early on, a few other mac clone OS's would come around, though they would only serve to contribute code to the later clones.
The real shift would be when AT&T built Unix. Although they would have developed an extensive GUI'd OS to rival Apple, so much of the code was contributed and tossed around that surely a either a quick scratch project or a release would dump this into Open Source Which wasn't so much reactionary to Microsoft as it was idealogical after Emacs was written/stole. After the start of a free Open Unix for Mac/Mac Clone, it would continue to grow from earlier than linux started to grow. And would have overtaken Apple in the early 90's. As all the game hardware and games would be supported, and much more easily integrated with the hardware than what Apple deam Mac. Hardware manufacturers would be some of the greater contributers to Open Unix as they would prefer their technology be used. Apple would have effectivly be cloned out of existance. As the hardware clones would kill their hardware market, and Open Unix would take over the OS. Rather than see the revival of Mac we have seen in the past 5 years or so, they would have died out quickly after losing market share, only having the same functionality for much more money.
Conclusion: Most likely we would be using an Open Source Unix clone, on Apple clone hardware. Apple as a hardware/software company would be completely dead.
Life without MS? (Score:2, Interesting)
I hated Windows when it came out, but my clients started asking about it and I had to support it. If nothing else (as others have mentioned) it has progressed the market in terms of faster CPU's, ram, video cards, etc. Personally I still think there is alot of programming "overhead" nowdays.. but then again, I still enjoy playing empire and sopwith.
If there wasn't a MS, then there would be either Apple, or IBM and who knows if OS/2 would have even popped into view. (along with Linux for that matter) Speaking of Apple, I'd love a new G5 but damn it!
IF not for M$, web apps would be much simpler (Score:5, Interesting)
Maybe Microsoft did a lot of good. I am sure a lot of posts will show that.
Here I would like to stress what a mess Microsoft has made of web applications by meddling with Java and killing off it support in Windows.
I am a web programmer and I know the hurdles encountered when delivering a web application.
My experience says 80% of the development and maintenance efforts go to the presentation layer. Why? Because it is done through the ass. Excuse me, but HTML+JavaScript was not designed as a user interface layer. Implementing thin-clients in Javascript is suicide, a slow and painful one. Re-sending the form to the browser every time an action is made is assinine.
It is ludicruous, the things companies do right now to implement a web user interface. When 20 programmers and 15 designers spend all day explaining to each other what bits in the entangled mess of a page the designer should change to change the interface , it is not programming, it is extremely distorted masochistic masturbation.
Enter client-side java. Thin clients? Easy. Security+sandbox? Yep. Custom widgets? Yep. Direct graphics rendering? You bet. And it can be done in a few weeks by a programmer + UI designer. As a result, half the burden is off the server, the interface is natural and easy to use, maintenance costs are minimal.
Face it, Browser-embedded Java is the answer to all these freaking mammoth problems web development has drowned itself into. This technology is how many? 10 years old?? Why has not it been accepted???
Enter Microsoft.
Had Microsoft not interfered, client-side Java would be as ubiquitous on the desktop as are GNU tools on unix'es, due to its superior design and concept. But no, M$ had to distort it and obstruct it so it never made it to the users' desktops. Instead it promises
And this is just one example. Killing off good ideas is M$'s job. Not innovation, not better products, not open standards, not fair play. Microsoft has just killed everyone in the IT and scared the shit out of everyone else. It stands alone on a pile of skulls two stories high.
It would be a little like 1994 (Score:1, Interesting)
In 1988, you could buy Windows (2.0 anyway). But MacOS, Amiga and Atari-ST/TOS were all good (if somewhat mutually incompatible) alternatives. Competition was forcing prices down and quality up. All was well.
In 1994, The PC architecture had basically won (except for PowerMacs and very stubborn Amiga users), but you could still buy OS/2 instead of Windows. The most popular Word Processor was still WordPerfect 5.1--and it had competition from Amiword, MS-Word and others. The most popular spreadsheet was Lotus 123--but it had competition from Quattro, Excel and others. Netscape was the main browser (and web server)--IE wasn't even available yet.
In 1995, MS introduced Windows 95 and used the new APIs and OEM agreements to lock out all its competitors. In less than two years, there were no serious competatiors in any market. New startups like BE or Go died on the vine from MS interference.
What MS did between 1993-1998 was a crime, pure and simple. They took a healthy, competative market that was good for users and crushed it with OEM agreements, giveaways and secret API's. This is a proven fact from the US trial statement of facts.
So I think that like without MS--at least life without MS Windows--would have been (and would still be!) a big improvement.
Re:If Microsoft ceased to exist today... (Score:3, Interesting)
Many folks today forget that in it's day Apple was every bit as evil, sly, underhanded, and monopolistic as Microsoft is today.
Re:MS Bashing (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm reasonably certain that you're wrong.
Personally I use windows because I choose to. Why? Better hardware support, apps I don't want to do without and the occasional game.
I've tried Linux regularly since Redhat 4.2, and I basically think Linux seems like a fine OS. But guess what? I don't really care what OS I'm running as long as I can use the programs I like, and can do what I want.
I've thought about running things with Wine or installing VMWare and running my windows apps this way. But every time I just stop short, because it doesn't seem worth the effort. I can't find Linux' killer app.
Linux needs to be able to do something, that I can't do with Windows, and that I would actually want to do.
All the arguments about bugs and security don't work on me. I'm pretty well firewalled, and I choose my hardware with care. I can't remember the last time I experienced a blue screen but its several years ago..
I'm using lots of open source software, and I think open source is a great movement.. But I'm always going to use the tool that fits the task, and doesn't steal my time away from reading Slashdot.
Perhaps the introduction of DRM in Windows, will be what gives me enough incentive to switch to Linux..
We'd be more productive without Microsoft (Score:3, Interesting)
Aside from the psychological shock to the MBAs who worship Chairman Bill, a marketing behemoth like Microsoft could disappear and the economy would pick up. How much time is and money is wasted on MSTDs like Bagle, which are the result of design flaws? How much time is wasted on incompatibility issues between different versions of MS-Office? How much time is wasted with end users being shoe-horned into being amateur sysadmins and security specialists? How much time is wasted reinstalling a system after a supposed patch or upgrade or general cruft takes it down? How much time is wasted getting back to where you left off after such an interruption? How much time and money is wasted on "upgrading" hardware and software every 12 - 18 months?
All that comes out of your company's or organization's result.
Identity theft would be harder ( or involve more social engineering). Industrial espionage would be much harder since other OSs are more secure, designed for a networked multi-user environment.
Communication would be easier, sendmail/exim/postfix/qmail just don't lose mail like MS-Exchange which has 5% to 15% just vanish without trace or, perhaps worse, generate a "user does not exist" error.
In all, I see the disappearance of Microsoft as a positive and, really, a necessary step not just for the advancement of technology but also for the re-growth of the world's economy.
CP/M (Score:3, Interesting)
The rest, as they say, is history.
CP/M was interesting because it was portable. It was written mostly in PL/M (vs. 8086 assembler for MS-DOS). It started out on the 8080 and went to the Z80 (and enhanced 8080 clone from Zilog). There were also ports to 8086 (and enhanced but incompatible 8080 derivative from intel) and the Motorola 68000.
If IBM hadn't chosen MS-DOS inadvertantly, there would have been a more diverse early market of CP/M machines with various different binary architectures. Since the Z80 was so popular, there may have been more of a 3-way battle between Z80, 68k and 8086. The 8086 might not have been so successful (IBM wanted to use the 68k but it wasn't ready in time) and there may have been a significant market in Z80-derived enhanced processors i.e. 16-bit extensions and even 32-bit ones! If only IBM had chosen the 68k though, and Gary hadn't had a row with his wife, the abominations that were the 8086 architecture (and the Pentium) and MS-DOS (non-portable, proprietary, half-baked, buggy, etc.) would not have happened. Bill would not be the richest man in geekdom. IBM, it's all your fault.
A news headline from the business section (Score:2, Interesting)
Though most of the allegations made by the plaintiffs against Apple were found to be false, the allegations of monopolizing the consumer software and hardware markets and the allegations of fraud were not false.
"The next phase [the penalty phase] of this lawsuit should be a bit fun," said Mike Rotch, representing the more than a thousand plaintiffs in this case. "This is where they will be made to take responsibility for their actions."
"My client is simply providing what its customers want," said Johnnie Cochrane, representing Apple Corporation. "Why is that a crime?"
-----
This is from a fictional newspaper in a fictional reality. This is not to be construed as libel.
Re:Standards (Score:2, Interesting)
You mean like the competition between RSS and Atom news reader formats?
though ye may be trolling, i must say thats the second worst comparison i have ever heard, besides the apples and oranges one.
count how many people on this planet use/care about phones vs. news readers.
btw, the width of railroads was determined by the width of a horses arse. [tiac.net]
Re:One thing's for sure (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Comdex 1983 (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Without Microsoft..... (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple more or less invented [mackido.com] most of what you think of as the GUI. It was their property. The world might be a better place if ownership of lots of property was moved around, but without general respect for ownership rights, the world doesn't work.
In short (from the reference above):
Microsoft got a license from Apple to port their applications to other platforms and managed to get a judge to allow them to copy the GUI. So this was original work from Apple that Microsoft managed to steal.
Well, low business morals are something that you could admire Microsoft for... (You're a big fan of the mob, too?)
It is really strange that this is not written in articles. It probably have something to do with the large Microsoft ad budget -- and helped along historically that companies with large ad budgets was dependent on the Msoft monopoly for their survival...
Re:Standards (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Standards (Score:3, Interesting)
However, if this happened and property developers countinued to use building standards set by goverments, then SCO would try to sue the builders of the Empire State Building for $50billion (been there this week) for use of Intellectual Property regarding the use of open source calculations for load bearing, building structure and the like.
That is the problem with the computer industry at the moment. There is currently no real innovation and everything new just requires more processing power. When the industry understands that most home PCs are nothing more than games machines and word processors, then computers will be designed more for their final application and not for the benefit of the few people that actually can program them. The computer industry would belive that most consumers would prefer a 50 story office block rather than a four bedroomed house to live in, and charge you the appropriate amount.
The problem is Microsoft are learning, they already have the X-Box and the Pocket-PC....
Re:Standards (Score:2, Interesting)
Microsoft, a neccessary evil I have to thank. (Score:1, Interesting)
Without learning that first CLI, I wouldn't have discovered Telix in a folder.
Without Telix, I wouldn't have learned about modems.
Without a modem, I wouldn't have learned about Prodigy.
Without Prodigy, I wouldn't have learned about BBS'es.
Without BBS's I wouldn't have learned about Fidonet.
Without Fidonet, I wouldn't have learned about Compuserve.
Without learning about Compuserve's PSN, I would have never discovered the WELL.
Without the WELL, I would have never had my first shell account. Without that shell account, I wouldn't have learned about BSD UNIX.
Without UNIX (and Linux) I wouldn't be who I am, doing what I do for a living today.
All because of an old 486 running DOS 6.22
Re:Standards (Score:1, Interesting)
Uh...
FILE *
...
concat_fopen (char *s1, char *s2, char *mode)
{
char str[strlen (s1) + strlen (s2) + 1];
}
That is C, specifically the latest standard (C99) has a section (6.7.5.2 Array declarators) that discusses this. Bottom line is that it is part of the standard, even if you do not know it or some oher compiler does not support it.
What if M$ were gone NOW...not "never existed" (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:missed the GUI? (Score:2, Interesting)
Personally I believe that if there had been no microsoft then the development of the PC as an essential part of modern living might never have happened. OK they might be somewhat over zealous and use dubious business methods, but what company doesn't. Let us also not forget that they could, if they so wished, use their position for rather more unpleasant things that just squashing the competition. Imagine what would happen if microsoft was owned by Rupert Murdoch for example *shiver*
GCC non-standard? puh-leeeez... (Score:5, Interesting)
void somefunc(void) {
for(int i = 0; i < 4; i++ ) {
}
i = 23;
}
What's worse is that you *have* to follow their archaic scoping rules... the following *will not* compile with vc:
void somefunc(void) {
for(int i = 0; i < 4; i++ ) {
}
for(int i = 0; i < 4; i++ ) {
}
}
VC claims that the variable 'i' is declared twice.
There are many more examples. Here's another code snippet that vc will compile, but is not standard:
enum MyEnum {
FOO,
BAR
};
void somefunc(void) {
whatever = MyEnum::FOO;
}
The problem is that the c++ standard states that enums place their contents in the scope level immediately above their own, *not* in a separate scope (this is a holdover from c). You can't reference the contents of an enum like you would any other name space, ie 'MyEnum::FOO' should be simply 'FOO'.
I'm sure there are many many more examples, but who cares? No one will ever read this comment anyway.
Re:Standards (Score:1, Interesting)
Businesses don't.