What if Microsoft never existed?

[YKhan]

This is an interesting piece of science-fiction about an alternative
reality Earth where Microsoft never existed.

If Microsoft Never Existed...
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1869090,00.asp?kc=ETRSS02129TX1K0000532

Yousuf Khan

 

[HenryNettles]

This is an interesting piece of science-fiction about an alternative
reality Earth where Microsoft never existed.

If Microsoft Never Existed...
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1869090,00.asp?kc=ETRSS02129TX1K0000532

Yousuf Khan

Interesting, but not very likely. If Microsoft had not taken over the PC
world (at least in Operating Systems), there would be a lot more diversity,
true. But I think Linux would have at least a 50% market share, more
likely 70 or 80%. Text based operating systems would have been left in the
dust almost as quickly as they were by Windows. The difference, of course,
would have been X-Windows instead of Windows.

There is some potential truth in the writers observations about cost.
Without a common OS, the PC would not have penetrated into the home market
as quickly and as completely. However, it would still have penetrated into
the corporate/business market on a massive scale, and this would have
driven costs sharply downward. Prices probably would not be as low as they
are today, but they would be closer to today's reality than to what the
writer was imagining.

Overall, though, I think life would be a lot more fun for those of us who
truly like and enjoy computers.

 

[Rob Stow]

Interesting, but not very likely. If Microsoft had not taken over the PC
world (at least in Operating Systems), there would be a lot more diversity,
true. But I think Linux would have at least a 50% market share, more
likely 70 or 80%.

Would there have been a Linux at all without MicroSoft ? MS
played one heck of a big role in creating the environment that
led to the development of Linux.

In any case, MS has played such a big role for such a long time
that it is pointless, even though it might be amusing, to
speculate on how things might have turned out differently.
Without a lab to test a hypothesis in, the hypothesis will never
be more than wild speculation. You might as well speculate about
how life on Earth would have been different if the atmosphere had
methane instead of oxygen.

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Interesting, but not very likely. If Microsoft had not taken over the PC
world (at least in Operating Systems), there would be a lot more diversity,
true. But I think Linux would have at least a 50% market share, more
likely 70 or 80%. Text based operating systems would have been left in the
dust almost as quickly as they were by Windows. The difference, of course,
would have been X-Windows instead of Windows.

I don't think we'd be any different if Microsoft didn't exist. Remember
that at the time IBM went shopping for an OS, they originally went to
Gary Kildall and Digital Research, before settling on Bill Gates and
Microsoft. They would've simply settled on DR if Microsoft didn't exist.
And we'd still have a unified DOS operating system, this time DR-DOS
rather than MS-DOS, which would've begat a Windows of some sort. Lord
knows how predatory DR would've been if they'd been given the chance. DR
was already known for some arrogance at that time, and it was already
much larger than MS was at the time. DR, with arrogance already flowing
through its blood, and starting out already bigger than MS might have
been an even more serious threat to software producers than MS turned
out to be.

No, if you wanted to never experience any company like Microsoft in
history, then you'd have to go back further and eliminate CP/M from ever
being created. CP/M begat DOS, which begat Windows. At that point in
time, I have no idea what would've emerged in place of CP/M: Unix, VMS?
I somehow doubt it would be either of those two as they were too
high-end, you need something much simpler to emerge. Perhaps it would've
been an OS with an embedded Basic interpreter as its command shell, like
Commodore Basic.

There is some potential truth in the writers observations about cost.
Without a common OS, the PC would not have penetrated into the home market
as quickly and as completely. However, it would still have penetrated into
the corporate/business market on a massive scale, and this would have
driven costs sharply downward. Prices probably would not be as low as they
are today, but they would be closer to today's reality than to what the
writer was imagining.

The hardware costs came down as a result of IBM's original open hardware
design, not because of Microsoft's software. However, Microsoft did
unite the IBM PC with its clones under one software umbrella, which
allowed the cost reductions to escalate. However, as I said, if it
wasn't Microsoft somebody else would've come out with a DOS regardless.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Would there have been a Linux at all without MicroSoft ? MS played
one heck of a big role in creating the environment that led to the
development of Linux.

Oh I think it would've still come into existence. If it wasn't the high
cost of Microsoft software that drove people to write Linux, then it
would've been the high cost of Unix software that drove people to it. In
fact, with the compatibility between Unix and Linux, Linux would've
taken off much faster. Right now, since Linux and Windows are so
different there is a big hump to get over to go from one to the other.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Roger Hunt]

Would there have been a Linux at all without MicroSoft ? MS
played one heck of a big role in creating the environment that
led to the development of Linux.

In any case, MS has played such a big role for such a long time
that it is pointless, even though it might be amusing, to
speculate on how things might have turned out differently.
Without a lab to test a hypothesis in, the hypothesis will never
be more than wild speculation. You might as well speculate about
how life on Earth would have been different if the atmosphere had
methane instead of oxygen.

I was assisting in a farm yard this afternoon, with a herd of cattle,
and the atmosphere *was* largely methane.

 

[Carlos Moreno]

Oh I think it would've still come into existence. If it wasn't the high
cost of Microsoft software that drove people to write Linux, then it
would've been the high cost of Unix software that drove people to it. In
fact, with the compatibility between Unix and Linux, Linux would've
taken off much faster. Right now, since Linux and Windows are so
different there is a big hump to get over to go from one to the other.

You do have good points, but I still have to agree with the previous
poster -- I really doubt that Linux would have existed. Linus would
have kept it as a school project, and there would have been no
masive interest in the community of "hackers" around the globe to
give him a hand. It was only the desperate need for an alternative
facing the worst abomination in the history of technology (Microsoft
and Windows) that drove them to it.

High cost of Windows? High cost of Unix in that alternate reality?
No. It's not the high cost of Windows. It's the "price-gouged"
cost of Windows and its piece-of-crappi-ness caused by the most
abusive monopoly that mankind has witnessed in a long time (and
more: for people born around the time where PCs started to exist,
Microsoft is the *only* monopoly of such magnitude that they have
witnessed).

Plus, you're forgetting about something: in a world without
Microsoft -- assuming that there was no other equivalent of MS,
which may or may not be a reasonable assumption -- the prices of
whatever OS or software existed would not be as high (for the
parameters of the market, that is). With no monopolistic SOB
gouging the price knowing that the market and the public has no
saying in it, competition would have kept the prices down to a
*fair* figure.

If software companies only sell a few hundred thousand copies
of an OS -- an OS that is high-quality, then it seems reasonable
that it would cost a few hundred or a few thousand dollars a
piece. The price of Windows is so brutally high because they're
selling millions and millions of copies of a poorly-engineered
piece-of-crap produce and they're charging a very high fraction
of the cost of the computer for something that has no "per unit
production cost" (as opposed to the PC itself).


Now, the thing is, perhaps the Microsoft phenomenon is something
that was *mathematically bound* to happen -- i.e., the "vivious
circle" from which Microsoft is benefiting: everyone uses
Windows, so everything is made for Windows (which is the only
valid reason for anyone to choose Windows). The thing is,
mathematically speaking this is easy to explain: the market
is a system with positive feedback -- it is bound to saturation;
possibly oscillation (but who knows what the frequency might
be -- decades? Many decades? It certainly looks like DC right
now, so we are in saturation and until someone "turns the
decide off and restarts it" I don't think it will move to
another point in "oscillation")

So, if it wasn't Microsoft, wouldn't it had been IBM? Would it
had been Apple? (would Steve Jobs have been the "big bad guy"
that drove a community of hackers to "rebell" by joining and
helping that guy what's-his-name in Finland with his crazy
idea that he called what's-its-name?).

But I'm quite certain that in a world without Microsoft *and
without an equivalent replacement*, there would have been no
drive to create something like Linux. (perhaps in the long
run -- University researchers *could* have ended up doing
something similar that caught enough momentum?)

Carlos
--

 

[YKhan]

Now, the thing is, perhaps the Microsoft phenomenon is something
that was *mathematically bound* to happen -- i.e., the "vivious
circle" from which Microsoft is benefiting: everyone uses
Windows, so everything is made for Windows (which is the only
valid reason for anyone to choose Windows). The thing is,
mathematically speaking this is easy to explain: the market
is a system with positive feedback -- it is bound to saturation;
possibly oscillation (but who knows what the frequency might
be -- decades? Many decades? It certainly looks like DC right
now, so we are in saturation and until someone "turns the
decide off and restarts it" I don't think it will move to
another point in "oscillation")

I do think this idea of being mathematically bound to have a Microsoft
or equivalent company emerge is interesting and probably right. At the
time when DOS emerged as the predominant operating system, it was
something that people were clamoring for, for a long time. As I said
elsewhere, if it weren't Microsoft, then it could've been someone else
trying to emerge, my guess is it would've been Digital Research.

So, if it wasn't Microsoft, wouldn't it had been IBM? Would it
had been Apple? (would Steve Jobs have been the "big bad guy"
that drove a community of hackers to "rebell" by joining and
helping that guy what's-his-name in Finland with his crazy
idea that he called what's-its-name?).

It wouldn't have been IBM. IBM had its day as a monopoly decades
earlier. And IBM's monopoly was based around hardware sales. IBM didn't
find software all that important, and it didn't know how to harvest the
money-making power of software. Besides it wouldn't have let its DOS
run on any other clones of its PCs. It would under all circumstances
try to keep it proprietary to its own hardware.

Steve Jobs and Apple might have been a probable case though. They
understand the importance of software.

But I'm quite certain that in a world without Microsoft *and
without an equivalent replacement*, there would have been no
drive to create something like Linux. (perhaps in the long
run -- University researchers *could* have ended up doing
something similar that caught enough momentum?)

If there were a lot of competing operating systems, then yes perhaps a
free OS wouldn't have been as much necessary.

Yousuf Khan

 

[nobody]

Oh I think it would've still come into existence. If it wasn't the high
cost of Microsoft software that drove people to write Linux, then it
would've been the high cost of Unix software that drove people to it. In
fact, with the compatibility between Unix and Linux, Linux would've
taken off much faster. Right now, since Linux and Windows are so
different there is a big hump to get over to go from one to the other.

Yousuf Khan

Like it or not, Windows is the standard. While it is arguable if
Windows is a good OS or not, and whether it deserves its position as
THE OS, it is the fact of the matter. This is the standard to which
most of the software is written.
Netscape may lament MS dominance being the cause of its demise, but
its initial rise was mostly, if not only, because computers already
penetrated residences. If computers were confined to the offices and
labs, WWW would remain what it was in the beginning - an obscure app
by the geeks for the geeks. And the very reason for computers getting
into the dens and bedrooms was the software, including OS, becoming
(relatively) cheap to buy, and even cheaper to copy - it was
guaranteed (almost to work on standard hardware - as long as the
hardware was compatible with DOS. Since the sales of hardware reached
the volume, the prices went down, fueling more sales - if this is not
a virtuous cycle, then what is? All this wouldn't happen if one could
not buy mass-produced (therefore relatively cheap) software off the
shelf, or even borrow a floppy with WordPerfect or Flight Simulator
from a classmate or neighbor and copy it to his machine and make it
work. There wouldn't be Doom 3 without the original Doom, and that
Doom would be impossible without a critical mass of PCs running the
same OS (in this case, MS DOS), because back then ID was too small an
outfit to afford coding to multiple platforms.
Without the standard, the life of developers would be hell. I
remember what a nightmare it was doing Javascript, let alone DHTML,
when Netscape 4 was competing against IE4. These days, when Netscape
is dead (OK, they still do releases, but largely based on Mozilla),
and IE, Mozilla, and Opera all support the same DOM (OK, with some
twists and proprietary additions and extensions, but the lowest common
denominator isn't THAT low as it used to be), life is much easier.
One of the reasons other OSs are doomed to be niche players is the
same that doomed Itanic and led to the rise of x86-64. It's backward
compatibility. In order to switch from Windows to Linux or Mac, one
must convert all the MS docs and xls's into something StarOffice would
understand, get new copies of apps (if exist) for the new platform or
hope the Windows emulator would run them fast enough to be usable,
learn the new interface - even XP is sufficiently different from 98/2k
that it takes some effort getting used to, and Linux is much more
different. You are in trouble when you get an email with .doc
attachment, especially if you must read it. Most job postings require
to reply with resume in .doc format, which means that your .txt or
..rtf or .pdf has all the chances being thrown into garbage can.
Microsoft might be bad for the competitors as a monopoly, but for
everyone else it is good. It is THE standard, it supports legacy
hardware and software (OK, only to the extent, but still), and it is
_not_ expensive, at least by Western standards - guess how much of a
cut takes MS from that Dell $299 PC with XP Home and some cut-down
Office pre-installed?

NNN

 

[George Macdonald]

Like it or not, Windows is the standard. While it is arguable if
Windows is a good OS or not, and whether it deserves its position as
THE OS, it is the fact of the matter. This is the standard to which
most of the software is written.
Netscape may lament MS dominance being the cause of its demise, but
its initial rise was mostly, if not only, because computers already
penetrated residences. If computers were confined to the offices and
labs, WWW would remain what it was in the beginning - an obscure app
by the geeks for the geeks. And the very reason for computers getting
into the dens and bedrooms was the software, including OS, becoming
(relatively) cheap to buy, and even cheaper to copy - it was
guaranteed (almost to work on standard hardware - as long as the
hardware was compatible with DOS. Since the sales of hardware reached
the volume, the prices went down, fueling more sales - if this is not
a virtuous cycle, then what is? All this wouldn't happen if one could
not buy mass-produced (therefore relatively cheap) software off the
shelf, or even borrow a floppy with WordPerfect or Flight Simulator
from a classmate or neighbor and copy it to his machine and make it
work.

And when M$ came along with an inferior product at a low-ball "competitive
upgrade" price for WP, SS etc., everybody fell for it and is now trapped in
the bowels of Office-hell... at extortionate prices with no support
whatsoever.

There wouldn't be Doom 3 without the original Doom, and that
Doom would be impossible without a critical mass of PCs running the
same OS (in this case, MS DOS), because back then ID was too small an
outfit to afford coding to multiple platforms.
Without the standard, the life of developers would be hell. I
remember what a nightmare it was doing Javascript, let alone DHTML,
when Netscape 4 was competing against IE4. These days, when Netscape
is dead (OK, they still do releases, but largely based on Mozilla),
and IE, Mozilla, and Opera all support the same DOM (OK, with some
twists and proprietary additions and extensions, but the lowest common
denominator isn't THAT low as it used to be), life is much easier.

Netscape was *always* based on a Mozilla project - V4 just didn't do CSS,
and a couple of other things rarely used until IE came on the scene,
according to the standards. As for current current incompatibilities, they
are entirely at the feet of M$ -- go ahead and let 3rd parties plant
executable code, i.e. DLLs, on your system if you like, I prefer not to --
who just cannot resist the temptation to prorietarize a common industry
standard. They have tried with just about anything to do with networks and
computers - fortunately for us they were laughed out of IETF repeatedly...
until they wised up and employed a few guys who actually knew something
about networking.

One of the reasons other OSs are doomed to be niche players is the
same that doomed Itanic and led to the rise of x86-64. It's backward
compatibility. In order to switch from Windows to Linux or Mac, one
must convert all the MS docs and xls's into something StarOffice would
understand, get new copies of apps (if exist) for the new platform or
hope the Windows emulator would run them fast enough to be usable,
learn the new interface - even XP is sufficiently different from 98/2k
that it takes some effort getting used to, and Linux is much more
different. You are in trouble when you get an email with .doc
attachment, especially if you must read it. Most job postings require
to reply with resume in .doc format, which means that your .txt or
.rtf or .pdf has all the chances being thrown into garbage can.

You'll be interested to know then that the next version of Office is going
to support .PDF natively. In fact there is a growing trend to banish .DOC
format from e-mails: send a .DOC attachment to a Massachusetts state govt.
office and it will be stripped at the entry mail-server. Expect this
policy to spread rapidly.

This is just the beginning - the world is beginning to waken up to the
folly of storing one of its most valuable assets, i.e. information, in a
proprietary format, controlled by a miscreant corporation, which is like a
Welcome doormat for viruses and malware.

Microsoft might be bad for the competitors as a monopoly, but for
everyone else it is good. It is THE standard, it supports legacy
hardware and software (OK, only to the extent, but still), and it is
_not_ expensive, at least by Western standards - guess how much of a
cut takes MS from that Dell $299 PC with XP Home and some cut-down
Office pre-installed?

Bundling was outlawed decades ago - quite how M$/Dell gets away with this
is a matter for the (in)competence of our legal system.

 

[Gary L.]

This is an interesting piece of science-fiction about an alternative
reality Earth where Microsoft never existed.

If Microsoft Never Existed...
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,1558,1869090,00.asp?kc=ETRSS02129TX1K0000532

A slightly amusing but absurd article that shows a total misconception
of how the history of technology (and history in general) actually
works.

On the surface, as others have pointed out, it is likely that the
history of personal computers would have been substantially the same
without Microsoft. Other companies made the same type of products that
are made by Microsoft, including operating systems (with both text and
graphical interfaces), programming tools, office applications, etc.
Certainly Microsoft was a central player in the rise of IBM-compatible
MS-DOS systems and later dominance of Windows and MS Office. But
Digital Research, Apple, IBM, Lotus, Novell, WordPerfect or dozens of
other companies with competing products could have easily filled the
void if Microsoft never existed.

More interesting is the fundamental assumption that history is the
consequence of certain individuals engaging in specific behavior at
certain points in time. Call this the "Hero Theory of History." We all
learn this in elementary school (in the U.S.): history is the march of
events caused by the Big Heros. George Washington did this. Abraham
Lincoln did that. FDR, Stalin and Churchill defeated Hitler and saved
the world. Bell created the telephone. Edison invented the light bulb.
And on and on.

But if you dig beneath the surface, you find that there are processes
that drive these events and actions, and the individuals just happened
to be in the right place and the right time to become famous. Edison
was in a race to develop the first practical electric light. If he and
his staff hadn't stumbled on a workable material for the filament for
the light bulb, then someone else would have found it first and become
the "inventor" of the electric light. The time was ripe for the
invention, and Edison was lucky enough to win the race and cash in on
it first.

What drives historical events is the underlying process of humans
building upon the existing store house of knowledge, and adapting old
ideas for new applications and problems. The individual makes a small
contribution, but it is the process that drives events. Call this the
"Process Theory of History." It governs the evolution of most ideas:
science, technology, politics, economics, etc.

The history of technology is best understood by the Process Theory.
"Inventions" are almost always a small, incremental idea added to the
existing body of human knowledge. This can be seen with all major
inventions, such as the steam engine, automobile, airplane, telephone,
electric light, computer, etc. If you will recall a public television
series and book by James Burke a couple of decades ago called
"Connections," you will remember a very clear and convincing proof of
the application of this theory to all of today's modern technology.

So the point is that personal computers would be substantially the
same as they are today if Microsoft never existed. There would be some
comparatively minor differences in the details: maybe it would be an
Apple OS on the Motorola 68000 CPU, or IBM OS/3 on the PowerPC
platform, or DR CP/M on the MIPS CPU that because the dominant
platform in 2005. But the same forces that created the current
hardware and software products would still exist regardless of the
identity of the person of company that happened to ride the wave of
progress in the actual world. The power and usefulness of personal
computers using microprocessors are such that it is inevitable that
they would become ubiquitous, with or without Microsoft. The process
driving the evolution of this technology would be substantially the
same even if Microsoft never existed.

Thus, the article portraying an alternative non-Microsoft universe
with expensive and slow computers and no single dominant platform is
nonsense. Moore's law was not invented at Microsoft. And, in fact, it
was not invented by Mr. Moore or Intel. It was simply observed by Mr.
Moore and he was the first person to state the rule. Similarly, the
emergence of a single dominant platform in the realm of personal
computers seems likely, given similar trends in mainframe computers
dominated by IBM, the emergence of dominant formats for LPs, VHS video
tapes, audio Compact Discs, etc. It is simply a fact about our world
and the technological society that we live in.
- -
Gary L.
Reply to the newsgroup only

 

[nobody]

On Fri, 14 Oct 2005 14:13:13 -0400, George Macdonald

....snip...

And when M$ came along with an inferior product at a low-ball "competitive
upgrade" price for WP, SS etc., everybody fell for it and is now trapped in
the bowels of Office-hell... at extortionate prices with no support
whatsoever.

This is arguable. MS Word 1.0 for Windows (3.x back then) was way
better than then-dominant WordPerfect 5.? for DOS. WP stubbornly
refused to port it to Windows, and relented only when MS Word was at
6.0 (IIRC), and poised for grabbing more of remaining WP market share.
Besides, the first attempt of WP on Windows was clumsy and buggy, even
compared to MS Word. When Win95/Office95 came out, the fate of WP was
sealed.
While I didn't have any experience with Lotus123, I heard similar
stuff from the ones who jumped from 123 to Excel.
If you say Borland Paradox, I'd agree with you. Pdoxwin 1.0 was a
better-featured, easier to program product than MS Access 1.0 and even
6.0. Yet bundling of Access into Office effectively killed Paradox.
Why would somebody spend extra (don't remember the numbers, but
standalone Paradox cost more than Office Pro) on a software product
when a similar (even though inferior) thing is already available as a
part of already purchased Office?

....more snip...

Netscape was *always* based on a Mozilla project - V4 just didn't do CSS,
and a couple of other things rarely used until IE came on the scene,
according to the standards. As for current current incompatibilities, they
are entirely at the feet of M$ -- go ahead and let 3rd parties plant
executable code, i.e. DLLs, on your system if you like, I prefer not to --
who just cannot resist the temptation to prorietarize a common industry
standard. They have tried with just about anything to do with networks and
computers - fortunately for us they were laughed out of IETF repeatedly...
until they wised up and employed a few guys who actually knew something
about networking.

Was it based on Mozilla or not, document.layers was a nightmare to
code to comparing to document.all, and AFAIK the whole idea of layers
died with 4.x. OK, Mozilla (and IE as well) has now getElementById.
Not sure about internal IE implementation, but wouldn't be surprised
if getElementById is just a stab function to document.all. As for
CSS, it's one of most used tools in Web development(or is it just
me?), and its partial implementation in Netscape4 sucked big time, to
the extent it was hardly usable, if at all.

....more snip...
You'll be interested to know then that the next version of Office is going
to support .PDF natively. In fact there is a growing trend to banish .DOC
format from e-mails: send a .DOC attachment to a Massachusetts state govt.
office and it will be stripped at the entry mail-server. Expect this
policy to spread rapidly.

We'll see... But when Word will create/edit .pdf, it probably will
be the death knell for Acrobat.

Bundling was outlawed decades ago - quite how M$/Dell gets away with this
is a matter for the (in)competence of our legal system.

Can't comment on this one. If I were a lawyer, I wouldn't need to
bother about tech stuff - would just buy the latest and greatest when
I need it (or when the current marketing blitz makes me think so).
Yet I would have no time reading and posting here, being too busy
chasing the ambulances ;-)

Rgds,

NNN

 

[Rob Stow]

On Fri, 14 Oct 2005 14:13:13 -0400, George Macdonald

...snip...
This is arguable. MS Word 1.0 for Windows (3.x back then) was way
better than then-dominant WordPerfect 5.? for DOS.

The hell you say. Before I started my first programming job
after college I had been doing using WP 5.1 for a couple of years
and was suddenly forced to switch to Word 1 on Windows 3.11.
What a nightmare - if Windows didn't crash all on its own every
20 minutes, then Word would make it crash. I spent as much time
helping secretaries and the research (medical) staff deal with
the consequences of Windows crashes as I did doing my own work.

It wasn't long before I started doing most of my word processing
with WP 5.1 - only booting Windows long enough to import the
final document into Word in order to pay lip service to my
employer's insistence on using Word.

Thankfully I didn't have to wait too long before OS/2 Warp 3 came
out, which was an infinitely better platform for both running and
developing Windows software.

 

[George Macdonald]

On Fri, 14 Oct 2005 14:13:13 -0400, George Macdonald

...snip...
This is arguable. MS Word 1.0 for Windows (3.x back then) was way
better than then-dominant WordPerfect 5.? for DOS. WP stubbornly
refused to port it to Windows, and relented only when MS Word was at
6.0 (IIRC), and poised for grabbing more of remaining WP market share.
Besides, the first attempt of WP on Windows was clumsy and buggy, even
compared to MS Word. When Win95/Office95 came out, the fate of WP was
sealed.

Arguable... yes! WP resisted Windows because it threw away a lot of the
value of their product, viz. the printer drivers... and left you with the
half-assed mess of Windows 3.x WYSIWYG printing as it stood at the time.
Windows 3.x itself was a buggy mess... M$ had the advantage of internal
knowledge of all its err, foibles. Oh and if you remember back to that
time, M$ had a few moments with some of their Office SRs: new .DLLs which
broke other software all over the place, including some M$ software.

Without the "competitive upgrade" scam I doubt that Word/Excel would have
had the success they eventually got.

While I didn't have any experience with Lotus123, I heard similar
stuff from the ones who jumped from 123 to Excel.
If you say Borland Paradox, I'd agree with you. Pdoxwin 1.0 was a
better-featured, easier to program product than MS Access 1.0 and even
6.0. Yet bundling of Access into Office effectively killed Paradox.
Why would somebody spend extra (don't remember the numbers, but
standalone Paradox cost more than Office Pro) on a software product
when a similar (even though inferior) thing is already available as a
part of already purchased Office?

That's the standard M$ ploy: free trials and low-ball "competitive"
pricing... to get you hooked on their file formats, which they keep
changing... just to keep you on your toes... and break all the
"converters".

...more snip...
Was it based on Mozilla or not, document.layers was a nightmare to
code to comparing to document.all, and AFAIK the whole idea of layers
died with 4.x. OK, Mozilla (and IE as well) has now getElementById.
Not sure about internal IE implementation, but wouldn't be surprised
if getElementById is just a stab function to document.all. As for
CSS, it's one of most used tools in Web development(or is it just
me?), and its partial implementation in Netscape4 sucked big time, to
the extent it was hardly usable, if at all.

Yeah well Netscape4's design was apparently just unsuitable for a full CSS
implementation, which is why Mozilla made a right turn and followed the
Gecko project, which unfortunately got released before it was ready for
prime time. In the meantime, M$ had, in their usual style, glibly ignored
any attempts at standardisation and thought they could define methods which
would become the de facto standards. Hopefully that is behind us but we'll
see what the next IE brings.

...more snip...
We'll see... But when Word will create/edit .pdf, it probably will
be the death knell for Acrobat.

I'm not sure if it'll take .PDF input for editing - more likely just an
output conversion. When you think of all the damage caused by .DOC
transmissions/attachments, with its obvious potential for malicious
intrusion, the only conclusion can be that people who started to use it for
document exhange were too stupid to know any better; the people who did
know just got dragged along by the inertia... kinda sad really where the
LCD user leads the technology direction. This is how we end up with things
like the Winmail.dat cock-up.

One good thing: the .PDF feature means that M$ has actually acknowledged a
file extension invented by someone else; it always bothered me that an ISV
had no way of "registering" file extensions to guard against a future
hi-jack of same by M$... and they did at one time use .PDF for a different
purpose: Program Descriptor File IIRC.

 

[nobody]

The hell you say. Before I started my first programming job
after college I had been doing using WP 5.1 for a couple of years
and was suddenly forced to switch to Word 1 on Windows 3.11.
What a nightmare - if Windows didn't crash all on its own every
20 minutes, then Word would make it crash. I spent as much time
helping secretaries and the research (medical) staff deal with
the consequences of Windows crashes as I did doing my own work.

It wasn't long before I started doing most of my word processing
with WP 5.1 - only booting Windows long enough to import the
final document into Word in order to pay lip service to my
employer's insistence on using Word.

Thankfully I didn't have to wait too long before OS/2 Warp 3 came
out, which was an infinitely better platform for both running and
developing Windows software.

....snip...

Well, if you have actively used WP5.1 for long, long time, all these
stupid function keys got hardwired in your brain. Of course the
switch to Word was not so easy. For me, a very occasional WP user, WP
was something to struggle with and I had to keep that function key map
pasted to the monitor to look it up all the time. So for me, the time
WinWord came out couldn't come too early.
As for the instability, the sysadmin at that place should've been
fired for poorly configuring the systems. All my 486 systems, built
from low end to midrange priced components (I was a student back then
working part time, so I had to really pinch the pennies) were stable
enough under win3.x even when multitasking (i.e. working in the same
Word, having a graphics app minimized, and downloading in the
background on that 9600 modem). My last 486 was even overclocked to
160MHz, yet 3.11 was quite stable. Not that I've never seen a
bluescreen, but it wouldn't happen even every day, so once in 20 min
means something in the config was screwed up. In fact, to me it
seemed that the first incarnation of Win95 was much less stable than
3.11, so I stayed away from 95, and later had the system dual-booted -
NT4 for 32 bit stuff when I needed it, and DOS6.1/Win3.11 for the
rest.

NNN