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On Sun, 10 Feb 2019 06:10:48 +1100, "Rod Speed"
wrote:



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On Sat, 9 Feb 2019 05:09:43 -0800 (PST), trader_4
wrote:

On Saturday, February 9, 2019 at 12:02:25 AM UTC-5,
wrote:
On Fri, 8 Feb 2019 20:54:43 -0700, rbowman wrote:

Gates is the same deal. He built on his vision and while I'm not the
biggest fan of the OS the programming tools have been excellent since
long before Windows. Still, where did all the money come from?

Gates used his early money to buy out his competition and enhance his
monopoly position. It became a perpetual motion machine, make more
money, buy out more competitors, until he owned over 95% of the
business PC market. "Arty" people may be using Apples to do their
particular art (CGI etc) but the payroll department is running windows
office.

The early success that put them in a near monopoly position, was not
about buying out competition, but by being
very lucky to have been chosen by IBM to provide the OS for their
first PC. That's how MSFT owned the business PC market. IBM and
all the IBM clones ran MSFT OS and had no choice. It was the power of
the IBM brand, setting a standard that really put them where they
are today. Later they used that success to expand into other areas,
eg applications, internet, etc, a lot of that through acquisitions.

Bill Gates bought DOS from Digital Research without telling them
about the IBM deal and most of his "innovation" since then was
also from simply buying a better package from a competitor.

That's a lie with Office alone, let alone the Xbox etc.
And didn't happen with Windows either.

There are a lot of features in office that were derived from things he
bought like Consumer Software co that gave him a lot of Excel and Fox
that contributed to Access.

Yes, but office isnt just a better product bought from a competitor.

And you mangled the story with excel.

He bought a half dozen companies to get the 3d technology in your Xbox

That mangles the real story too.

The pattern was simple., If he saw a product he would
have to compete with it, he just bought them out.

That isnt true of any of Office, Xbox, Windows etc.

Or networking either.

His biggest stroke of luck was that IBM had just fended off the DoJ anti
trust suit that had gone on for a decade and IBM was not in a position
to buy DOS from him outright and start that process all over again.

It is also why anti trust suits are good for the consumer.
Without having an unbundled hardware and software
model, there would not have been a clone PC market.

That's very arguable. IBM wanted to get things
done quickly with the PC and that's the reason
they took a completely different approach with
that product and were silly enough to have the
full circuit diagrams and the bios code in the
manual so it was trivial if not legal to clone it.

IBM was being very careful not to get itself back in Anti-Trust trouble.

That wasn't the reason they chose a completely
different approach to doing the PC with a
completely independent operation within IBM.

And wasn't the reason they bought the OS from Gates either.

The 1969 case had just been dismissed but the DoJ was still filing
motions. They wanted the PC to be an open architecture product
to get wide acceptance with a 3d party software vendor available
to avoid the "bundling" issue that got them in trouble in the 60s.

And yet they changed their mind on that approach with the PS/2.

It was a legal decision more than a business one.

Bull**** with the PC, that was done for other reasons,
the very laborious long winded approach that was
endemic in IBM at that time which wouldn't have
worked with what needed to be big step away
from the way IBM did things prior to that.

They did have a proprietary system and software
(PS/2 and OS/2) but that was really only aimed at
IBM business customers

That mangles the real story too with the PCjr etc.

and not actively marketed to the consumer.

Pity about the stuff they flogged thru retail consumer
markets long after it made any sense to do that stuff.

They would still be a business machine, priced out
of the reach of most consumers, like the PS/2 was.

But that wasn't because of the anti trust suits.
It was due to how IBM chose to do the PC.

They gave the PC business away to establish the x86
standard and pave the way for their proprietary machine.

That's bull**** too with the AT etc.

Although most people seldom ever saw a PS/2 except on TV,

That's bull**** too with the PCjr.

it was very successful for IBM in the business world.

No it wasn't. It didn't dominate the business world.

The goal was to replace every dumb terminal
with a PS/2 and that was very successful.

It did nothing of the sort. And the 3270 was nothing
even remotely like a dumb terminal either.