Comment by mattmaroon | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mattmaroon | Hacker News Reader

Windows was/is a great product in many senses. Great is not a word with a single application to an OS.

Windows was great in that it allowed multiple hardware vendors to compete on hardware without having to also design their own OS. It was great in that it allowed multiple corporations to market the same platform. And as it grew, it was great in that it allowed developers to write an app once that ran nearly anywhere.

There's a lot more to "great", as applicable to an operating system, than even usability, stability, graphic design. A lot of times the things you value, as a developer, aren't what the general public does. You might want an OS that's very much like Linux but with a much better GUI. Most people just want their PC to cost $300 and run any program they buy or have bought in the past.

So Microsoft's OS was clearly great by far more people's definition of the word than Apple's, and it reaped the rewards.

"Windows was great in that it allowed multiple hardware vendors to compete on hardware..."

Well, that is the "commotitized the complements" part.

The other part of your argument is that it is/was good enough for most users.

But let me put the question this way: If had it been 3x more expensive than the Mac, would have it been successful?

If not, then there's a clear distinction between a great product and a great price.

Remember the 3 Ps (Price, Product, Promotion)? Product and price are different things, specially in the software market, where the price doesn't necessarily reflect the cost.

So if people would not buy a 3x more expensive Windows, great product it not the motive by which it was successful.

I think the most accurate explanation in this case is not that Windows was a great product, but as another commenter said, that it offered a better value proposition for the money invested - and Microsoft had not the better product value, but the better price proposition, so they won that equation:

MacOS had a product value of 10, and a price of 5, so the value proposition was 2.

Windows had a product value of 5, but a price of 1, so the value proposition was 5, for each dollar invested.

To the average user, if MacOS was a 10, then Windows was an 8. I won't argue that they were playing catchup, but it wasn't that far behind after 3.1.

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