In the 1990s, the big fan war was between fans of Windows and fans of OS/2.
In those days, believe it or not, Microsoft was the one with massive numbers of zealots (OS/2 had them as well). Today, it may seem absurd that Microsoft had Mac-level zealots but it did.
With a single PC OS, we could all standardize. It would be great. Microsoft would never be so stupid as to let their OS get complacent…
Let’s use pictures:
Windows in 1994:
OS/2 in 1994:
Windows in 1995:
Competition causes Windows to make dramatic changes.
The next year, IBM throws in the towel on OS/2. Microsoft wins the OS wars through contracts with PC manufacturers that makes Windows available exclusively through them (i.e. the contracts promise a “lower price on Windows” in exchange for not shipping any other OSes). This becomes the beginning of the Microsoft anti-trust issue.
Microsoft now owns the desktop…
TEN. YEARS. LATER.
With the OS market cornered, Microsoft moves off to doing the Xbox, making search engines, Zune, etc.
You can see the depressing affect of market share here in this history of Windows.
Contrary to popular belief, consumers often do not choose the winners. Instead, the winners are able to get short-sighted decision makers to hand it to them. We use Windows as the standard today because the PC OEMs made the short-term decision to get a price cut in exchange for exclusivity.
This has become the template in the tech industry. Give something for cheap or free in exchange for exclusivity to those who have the real power to decide who will dominate. Once dominance is achieved, the dominant player then calls the shots.
Once dominance is achieved, the investment and cost necessary to compete is too high. That’s why Linux will never be a viable desktop competitor. The inertia is too strong.
All Malibu Stacey needed was a new hat to win her war.
Alas, I remember it well.
If it wasn't Microsoft, do you think another company would of done something similar?
For as tiny of a portion of the personal computer and operating system market as Apple does, it seems to do a lot of evil things as a company.
I did not jump to OS/2, but neither did I jump to Windows. I stuck with MS-DOS until companies stopped making MS-DOS games, around 1997 or so.
I actually started when I was a wee lad on the Apple ][ and I liked it ... until I tried a PC running MS-DOS. I actually loved it a lot more than the Mac I tried.
And ... I'm with you, Frogboy ... just because one company manages to dominate the market does not mean it makes a superior product nor that consumers ever really chose it. I bang my head on a table every time someone claims "Whine all you like, people chose X because its a better product." I have quite a few dents on my head and have had to replace my poor table several times ...
How do you break the cycle and get people to wake up? That's the question. I've unfortunately not had steady employment ... which means I've worked for a lot of different companies, big and small. Time and time again, the 'good' companies lose out to the evildoers, because evildoers don't do evil just for the sake of doing evil, they do it because the slime they ball makes them more money at lower cost. As much of a proponent as you are, even you've said things that support the cheaters-rising-to-the-top status quo in your statement about how people get wealthy through investing. Investing means putting money into companies that make money ... the companies that make the most money are the ones cheating. And some of that cheating makes the worst anti-competitive business practices look angelic. You've heard about the massive move of production from the U.S. to China? Did you know there are thousands of political prisons in China that use forced, unpaid labor ... and these prisons make goods for top U.S. companies? That's right, slavery. It didn't end with the Emancipation Proclamation ... its simply been "outsourced" overseas. I'm all for global trade ... I'm not blindly nationalistic ... but slavery is wrong, period, and companies that dump fair labor workers for slave workers should have their golf-balls castrated.
For many years, attempts have been made and failed to put the kibosh on the import of any goods produced through slavery, and if a country refused to grant unhindered access to its production facilities to ensure no forced labor was used to produce goods they would then export to us. A lobbying effort developed, of course, to fight these anti-slavery-import efforts and a lot of big name companies threw their money into the mix. Among them was, a bit ironically, the company that uses "don't be evil" as its motto ... yup, Google.
So the point of this, in relation to my mention of your discussion about people should invest: return on investment, the money made on the stock market, is earned through the cheats. Unfair practices, overseas slave labor, the undermining of every single environmental, labor and human rights law in the U.S. for every penny earned by going with cheaper morality-undermining overseas labor ... they make companies more profitable than companies that do "the right thing" by maintaining fair trade practices, not using slave labor, etc.
Slave labor taints stock prices ... and traditional investing rewards companies that use slave labor. Its become too strong of a fad to consider stocks as mere numbers on a ticker. How a company's profits are actually made are hidden, invisible ... and that means those that use the most anti-competitive and scummiest means are the ones who survive. Intentional or not, though, investing in stocks rewards and encourages this bad behavior.
So, then, if investing is the only way most people can get 'wealthy' -- and I myself did maintain a mutual fund IRA for some time until a combination of my conscience, thinking about it, and a medical bill I had no means of paying -- then is it worth it? Being destitute isn't fun, but is wealth obtained through investing in companies that profit from slavery worth it?
Beta vs VHS.
The former is an infinitely better medium...the latter 'won' because they actively promoted its adoption within the video porn industry.
Absolutely correct. Sony's Beta was truly superior to VHS. Dunno where it was promoted, though...
Not much to do in the outback.
Now if you want to talk about quality, those big laserdiscs of the early to mid-80's kicked betamax and VHS ass. They looked like DVD's or CD's of today but were the size of a large vinyl record. Of course they never caught on and were later dominated by tape players.
Absolutely. Every for-profit company that's remotely ambitious goes about trying to maximize their market share.
The issue isn't Microsoft. The issue are the stakeholders of a given platform giving up their stake in exchange for short-term benefit.
Word Perfect, Lotus, and many others abandoned their OS/2 efforts to support Windows instead because, in the short-term, it was in their interest. But once Microsoft owned the PC platform, it was able to turn its attention to maximizing the profits from that leverage. Hence, Word Perfect (as a separate company) died, Lotus only survived as part of IBM.
And of course, the PC OEMs can threaten to preload Linux but the platform is owned by Microsoft Windows today.
If I remember correctly, the biggest reason that VHS became the standard was that Sony would not allow any other manufacturer to use the Beta technology and create players.
Reminds me of PC vs Mac.
IBM allowed the tech to be used by all hence the reason PC dominates the market. The side effect of this for IBM was the demise of OS2.
Do you think the same might be said of Google? Nothing beats the price of "free."
Drug dealers did not invent this tactic.
And at the end of the day, developers are glad they only have one OS to develop for. Your screenshots are misleading, because you might as well post OS X and Linux screenshots, too. They all use the same thing: rectangular windows that contain applications, and little icons that represent something on your computer you want to access. Windows 7 has moved from titlebars in the taskbar to icons, in an attempt to "copy" OS X. The truth? I couldn't care less either way, and neither do consumers.
iPods have been years behind other MP3 players, but have dominated the market. Like someone else pointed out, VHS won over a superior competitor. Dreamcast, though a technologically amazing machine, lost out to its competitors. Life goes on, as does technology.
The lesson to learn from all of this is that moral/technical superiority mean nothing. You have to have competent marketing, and you have to know what your audience actually wants. Netbooks are a great deal and can run any application, but the iPad is oh so shiny. Who cares that it doesn't play flash or you have to pay for stupid little apps you could get for free on Windows? Not consumers.
If Linux suddenly disappeared, it would be a fart in the wind. If Windows didn't change again for 20 years and Windows 7 was the final build, developers and IT departments everywhere would rejoice. Consumers would love that they would only have one "computer" to learn. What if MS rolls out a crappy product and abuses their monopoly? What's that, no one would buy it (cough ME cough Vista cough), and keep using the old version? Guess they at least have to KIND OF innovate.
The only sad people if Linux died out? Probably the Linux developers and fans. But Linux still exists, and they still have their small communities where they pat each other on the back and say to each other, "Our product is superior! Our time will come." And it may very well be superior. But the time... the time's not a'comin.
I don't know why you made this comment. Did you use a router today? Talk on a smartphone? Read the BBC? Head on over to Foxnews.com? Operate a cnc mill? Watch a traffic light turn on the way to work today? Get money from an ATM? Make a cash deposit at your bank? Book airline tickets?
I'm hoping you're aware that unix is everywhere. You can't turn around without tripping over it, either as an embedded OS or as a webserver. Phones run it, websites run it, your bank almost certainly uses it, airline CEOs have lost their jobs trying to swap away from it.
Maybe you're just talking about the desktop environment. That's possible - I haven't seen a linux desktop GUI in three years. I can't remember the last time I deliberately left run level 3. You might have said "few people would care if Gnome or KDE died off," which would have a little more truth to it than your first comment.
Yes, I was talking about consumer and business desktop environments.
Actually, the real fight wass not Linux vs. Windows but rather DirectX vs. OpenGL. DX happened because Microsoft wanted in, and OpenGL put up such a good fight for so long that DX had to be good, it had to be fast, and it had to keep moving forward in terms of feature sets. DX10 and DX11 happened because Microsoft needed to hammer in the killing blows to OpenGL in gaming.
Who did the programing on OpenGL? A lot of "Linux" users. So in a way, even though I don't use linux for anything graphics related, I'm glad they are there.
Just like AMD vs Intel is good, ATI vs Nvidia was good, etc.
Actually Directx 8 and 9 did the killing blows. Opengl has been slower since around 2002.
If anything, Directx 10 went backwards. It had a better api, but required you to actually program. Programmers don't program today, unless your studio is run by gamers. if your on the leash of a ubisoft/bobby kotick ring, you aren't programming.
Not to mention that the gaming industry is one of increasing budgets and losing revenue. Even if a gamer type CEO approved extra programming, the results may not even be worth it.
One thing I have always wonder about, is being a fanboy a good or bad thing?
Most of the time you see it used in the forums as a derogatory description or remark.
Darn good question....but then I remember a time when 'gay' just meant you were happy...
I have always been and always will be a fan of MS-DOS, i learned on DOS 3.3, in fact i still have one of my first pc's and old packard bell 386sx, with 2 megs of ram, and DOS 6, it still runs, and every now and then i will fire it up, just to reminisce a little i guess, i bought that packard bell i believe Christmas 1989. But i have always loved DOS and to this day has kinda bailed me out here and there, lots of young people today have no idea how to type out a command line, even as simple as changing a driectory, or making one for that matter, i could go on and on here, but i wont torture anyone anymore LOL
I remember when all games had to be run in MS-DOS. Jazz the Jackrabbit FTW. Monkey Island and Leisure Suit Larry on floppies. My first comp was also a 386x, with a state of the art 2x CD-ROM drive.
I don't think it was until Windows 95 that most games migrated towards the OS proper.
brings back memories of playing Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego
/end old man rant...
Speaking of superior products that didn't persist, the Amiga was pretty good.
LOL...you just made me remember when Larry got the clap in LSL1.
Played that on the old PS2 Model 25, 8086 with a low density floppy. Had to boot to DOS and swap the disc to play the game.
I was in heaven when I got my first 286 with a whopping 20MB MFM hard drive and Windows 2.0. Oh yes, brings back memories of batch files to reboot to autoexec's that you spent countless hours on tweaking.
Ahhh, the good ol' days...happy things progressed to where we are today. Can't wait to see what another 20 years will bring to the industry.
I still have an Amiga 2000 emulator running in 1600x1200 32bit on my current PC - I keep bringing it with me every time I buy a new PC. I run it now and again for nostalgia sake.
Back to the original "fight" between Windows and OS/2 - I remember an OS called "DesqView X" (I think I got the spelling right there). Basically this thing would let you run DOS, Windows, X Window and its own native applications in parallel with full pre-emptive multi-tasking. I'm not sure if it let you run OS/2 apps. And I think we might have been up to 286's at the time.
I said Directx10 and Directx11 to be on the safe side, since I know at least one person around here who holds the opinion that OpenGL 2.x was about as good as DX9.
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