[ale] meeting

[John Marasco]

What MS brought first to the computer world was the only OS for the cheapest
computer system that filled most of the marketplace needs.  Momentum (and
aggressive business practices) were everything from that point on.  They
took good ideas (from others) and brought them to a low cost platform that
more people could afford and that boosted profit (for MS) and allowed them
to more quickly adapt the ideas of others to their product and even
integrate those ideas into a common suite all for the lowest cost hardware
platform (which at the time was 90% of the "system" cost).  There was a time
when another company could have competed with DOS for the market and there
was a time when another company could have competed with Windows.  When the
time was right Apple and Amiga were too busy trying to sell the consumer
proprietary systems (ignoring the cost advantages and innovations occurring
in the "open" IBM compatible hardware market) and IBM wasn't interested in a
quick and dirty low cost consumer OS and who else was there?

MS products may not offer the best bang for the buck any longer but at two
critical times (DOS and Windows) in the PC market many people (and/or IBM
depending on the product) felt that was a true statement and everything else
MS has done is built on that fact.  It's rather ironic but MS sold a system
to the masses that allowed them to leverage the competition rich IBM
compatible hardware arena.  No matter what HD, VC, MB, RAM, CPU I buy Word
will still open my file and process it just as well (or not).  If Apple or
Amiga had ever tried to make that claim when DOS or Windows was young then
we would live in a different world.  Unfortunately it was Bill Gates that
most aggressively brought that flexibility to the world and now we are
saddled with that fact.

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