Subject: Re: MacOS X 10.1
From: nathan r. hruby (nhruby@arches.uga.edu)
Date: Fri Nov 09 2001 - 11:08:46 MST
On Fri, 9 Nov 2001, Michael Giffin wrote:
>
> nnow, i have a question for Joe B:
> i know little about Apple's systems pre-OSX, but was Apple's stuff at
> such a competitive disadvantage against M$, given that the latter was
> really DOS? my understanding was that Apple's main failure was in
> marketing. Windows2000 is the only operating sys from M$ i would
> use, especially if i never had to fix it when it breaks, yet they
> dominated the world on on lousy GUIs slapped onto a weak and ancient
> system. but i imagine i do not fully understand the situation.
>
Marketing and Licensing and Timing is what made Microsoft the giant it is
today.
Back in the 80's MSFT got a deal with IBM to ship DOS (aka: cp/m with
hacks) on all of it's "personal computers." IBM didn't care, they thought
PC's were not going anywhere and their cash flow came from Big Iron
anyway.. so out shipped the IBM PC and others started to make clones.
People wanted the same software to run, so they used MS-DOS.....
(Somewhere in the back of my mind I seem to recall theat MSFT had a
stipulation in their contract with IBM that said all clones that were
licensed through IDB also has to ship with MS-DOS, but I'm not sure if
that's true or not.. I've never been able to confirm it) So the PC took
off and it took DOS along for the ride. Bill Gates knew it would, and
played IBM's disrespect for the PC maket to his advantage. After clones
started becoming commonplace Microsoft began branding the DOS as MS-DOS,
along with MS-Word, MS-Multiplan, etc... They kicked the marketing machine
into high gear and made lots of folks belive that they needed DOS.
granted at the time there weren't a host of other OS's to choose from for
your x86 hardware. The 386 made a difference, and Quarterdeck's X
implementation became popular with some.. but successive releases of DOS
ensured that it wouldn't run. as well as their own DOS implementation.
Enter Apple and the Mac. They drive PC's one step further. A GUI OS that
runs on a machine the size of a large toaster with just the same amount of
RAM as most PC's were shipping with (4MB). This pisses Bill off. He
finds out where the GUI technology comes from (Xerox) and does the same,
but Microsoft, now already loaded down with a legacy OS to support, can't
just up and break every DOS application out there -- enter Windows, a GUI
that runs atop DOS. Interesting, and similar to the way X works.... But
now with the need to process more data to power the GUI, DOS can't keep
up, so windows pretty much has to glue a whole new operation system ontop
of DOS so that legacy apps still work. They do several revsions of
windows, and by version 3 they finally get it right (and yes, I've used
Windows-286).. sort of... there's still the legacy of DOS underneath
win3.x, 95, 98 and ME. I think more that this is a testiment to DOS than
of windows :) I have a $30k magnetic motion capture system sitting in a
rack down the hall from me. What's it run? DOS-6.22. (why? 'casue you
can pretty much use DOS as a el-cheapo embedded system on standard x86
components..)
But clearly, power users and folks running <gasp> NetWare servers wanted
to run Windows on all their machines for *all* their tasks. Well, enter
again, IBM. IBM and MSFT make an agreement to create "the next generation
operating system" after about a year this falls apart. IBM comes up with
OS/2 and MSFT creates WindowsNT. Market market market.. nd you know the
rest.
A great deal of why MSFT is so big is beacuse most people (who aren't CS
majors) just don't know about anything else, and when presented with
something like Linux, Darwin, FreeBSD.. well they don't know it and it's
scary. No one wants to be scared, right? No one wants to re-learn a
whole new OS, right? So like dutiful sheep tens on millions of people go
out and buy Microsoft products becasue it's the path of least resistnace.
MSFt go into the right market at the right time and blinded enough people
for long enough that they could entrench themselves into the PC market so
well that it would take an act of god to remove them (and as we're seeing
now.. an act of Congress, just won't cut it :)
-n.. wowsa... I'm a ranty little mofo today :)
-- ...... nathan hruby - nhruby@arches.uga.edu computer support specialist department of drama and theatre http://www.drama.uga.edu/ ......
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