GUI

[Anton Markov]

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Excuse me, but I will have to disagree:

James Knotty wrote:

| You might want to read up on how Microsoft used extortion etc., to force
| market share.  You can find lots of info in books such as Netscape Time,
| The Microsoft Files, World War 3.0 and of course the trial transcript.
| One example of this, was when Windows 95 came out, and IBM wanted to
| sell it on it's systems, along with OS/2, MS refused to let them have
| W95, until they stopped supporting OS/2.  Then there was the bundling,
| where MS would make computer suppliers pay for a Windows licence on
| every system sold, even if shipped with a competing OS etc.  Do a bit of
| research and you'll see that's MS dominance had nothing to do with
| product quality and everything to do with "dirty tricks".
I would call that marketing genius.  Imagine making a product that would
force other companies to say "OS/2 is good, but we want to sell Windows
so much that we'll give it up."  The companies had every right to refuse
the Microsoft deals; they just wouldn't be selling Windows.  That is not
extortion.

| How productive would a secretary be, if she has to stop typing a letter,
| when she's formatting a diskette?  That's one example of MS
| productivity.  Also, many of the "innovations" in Windows, were
| "borrowed" from elsewhere.  The desktop is one example.  You may also
| recall the Stacker case, where MS stole their disk compression
| technology.   There are other examples, some of which are mentioned in
| the above sources. And of course lets not forget the deliberate
| "incompatibilies" is Windows, which prevented it from working with
| DR-DOS.  All that incompatibility was, was a check to see if it was
| running on DR-DOS and then crap out with an error message.  Bypass that
| check and it ran fine.
Now that's a totally different issue.  Microsoft products do lack
usability at the expense of a good first impression.  Then again, if
people are willing to buy them, then it's the people that need to change
not the software.
"You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink" ~Anon

And for the already-educated there is Linux ... and Mac.



- --
Anton Markov <("anton" + "@" + "truxtar" + "." + "com")>

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~ "The difference between insanity and genius is measured only by success."
~ - Some bad guy from 007
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