You can do a lot of stuff with the system as it is since it does expose a lot of its internals (and when you need to replicate functionality, there isn't that much in there to replicate so it is perfectly doable), but my point is that it wasn't as flexible or capable as Windows 1.0.

It wasn't just Microsoft's marketing skills that made Windows overshadow GEM, it was also that Windows was genuinely a better product - both from a technical and a functional perspective.