Microsoft Hoist by its Own Anti-Anti-Competitive Petard
computerworlduk.com
computerworlduk.com
If a court of law finds you guilty of dong something you think should be allowed, and later you see a competitor doing more or less the same thing, why not argue that such judgments should be applied equally?
lol
If you remove network effects from the equation, do you still believe Windows would have its current market share?
I believe quite the contrary - if network effects played no role in the availability and usefulness of a computer, we would have a far more diverse ecosystem than we have now. I am not talking Unix-like OSs (subject to their own network effects) but really wild things all the way from the Ataris and Amigas and Smalltalk-as-the-OS machines to desktop Connection Machines (I would love to have one) and Plan 9 desktops.
It would be a far more interesting world.
Two or three major OSes is more than enough of a headache for software companies and consumers alike. The world may be more interesting, but I have a feeling we would be at least 10-20 years behind where we are now with computing.
Machine-readable data exchange was not as important as it is today, but market pressures would, probably, influence software writers to both write more portable software (in order to sell to larger markets) and to use interchangeable data formats (something educated customers would see as added value).
The whole idea of "major software vendors" would also be very different, as the market would be much more fragmented.
And no. We wouldn't be behind what we have today. We still have files in folders, windows and mice. The coolest OSs available today are flavors of Unix and a rehash of VMS with roots on a rehash of CP/M. Most Windows users still believe files must have a 3-letter suffix. Windows users still endure drive letters. Unix users frequently endure differences between local and remote files. Most computers have two processors and most programs can't figure out what to do with one of them.
No. We have had pretty little progress during this period. We had more of the same - faster boxes with more storage, more colors, more pixels and more GFLOPS doing more or less what we used to do in the mid-80's and 90's. It's really hard to imagine an environment that would result in even less progress.
What we have accomplished in the last 20 years is the mainstream acceptance of computers. We have managed to get users familiar enough with them that they are comfortable doing things.
My grandparents no longer feel that they have to call me when they go to the store and buy a computer. They can get their email working without having to call me. They can upload their pictures and edit the documents without many issues.
Yes, there are still files and folders--but honestly: what is wrong with that? It fits how most people think. I can't name a single person I know who has a problem understanding the concept of folders and files on their computer. People don't -need- their desktop machines to do much more than they did in the 80s. And what people actually do has been streamlined and made easier. (And one could argue significant progress has been made, for example: entire airplanes are designed on computer before ever being built now. That was impossible in the 80s.)
The other stuff such as suffixes, drive letters, etc: I agree.
Computer geeks are not super-smart. It's wrong to assume they can master something other people can't. Most people didn't have computers not because they were too complicated but because they weren't useful enough. A diverse ecosystem of useful computers would attract as a diverse user base as we have now, perhaps more, if we accounted for a more diverse set of available computer platforms.
What's wrong with files? What's wrong with clicking a button with a floppy on it to save a document to a network-mounted disk array? My son never used a floppy to store his data on. He never owned a floppy. And he's 14.
You are describing network effects. In a hypothetical world where there are no network effects, there is no benefit to picking the most popular option -- precluding the need to standardize or pick winners. In the case of operating systems, this means you need to assume it is trivial for users and vendors to move between competitors. (For something closer to this ideal, think of JVMs or x86 chips.)
I wonder whether cross-platform frameworks like Java on the desktop would have enjoyed more uptake were that the case.
Microsoft has also benefited from the fragmented market that existed for many years and a clear sales pitch to different levels in the industry from the consumer to the corporation.
The great mistake that many have made is not to appeal to the corporate desktop. This requires Sales people to play golf in my view: not just writing useful software.
This attempt to rattle Google is just another example of these tactics at work.
Food for thought: As Apple is keen to point out, virtualization should minimize the influence of network effects on your choice of primary operating system. And yet Windows is still going strong... Is it purely a matter of price or user education?
"Familiar", perhaps. "Better"? That's highly disputable.
It's the little things that make it a really high-quality experience and that makes it so hard to move to other platform after using it for a while. The font rendering is usually better than Windows (although somewhat worse than with Macs). Select text and middle-click somewhere else spares me a lot of keyboard-mice coordination. Compiz is outstanding, and it's not just eye-candy - the multi-desktop concept is amazing and works remarkably well as an organizing tool, and maximizing/tearing off windows with gestures - that's something Windows users had to wait until w7 to get. Then there is the smooth operation - no lockups when your Windows box is too busy to bother to move the mouse and no annoying beachball from hell either - if the computer is heavily loaded, it just becomes slower, gracefully. It's also the "I told it to do it and it just did" thing - never, ever being unable to delete a file because a crashed program opened it. The computer will never demand to be restarted in the middle of your e-mail, but, when you tell it to restart, no iTunes or Office will block you. I forget how many times I told my Windows notebook to restart and went on to grab coffee, just to learn that a certain program refused to quit and that program was more important than my order to the machine to restart. Who's in command after all?
People often confuse quality with good-looking icons. That's not what it's about.