I never said that they were guilty of anything. The modern desktop OS industry, began somewhat competitively with Apple Dos, CPM, CPM86, MSDos, TRSDos, OS/9, Xenix, Topview, Vision, Windows, The Mac/Lisa Interface etc., However, almost 18 years later, it is left with only one truly dominant player MS.
MS Windows 3.0 emerged in 1991ish? By the time Win95/Win NT 3.5 came out four years later Microsoft was on top. There really hasn't been a single UI innovation on the x86 platforms since the 1991 timeframe. Nine years of new icons, a few new features a pretty much the same old song.
Up until about 1994, the consumer was benefiting from the emerging monopoly. Now the desktop OS, a pretty stale commodity, is only showing small incremental changes from revision to revision. Most Win32 releases for the last 5 years are just bundled bug fixes.
Win2000 desktop contains very few 'New/Innovative' features. MS will utlimately be the big winner in the cost savings derived from migrating to a singelton code set, not the consumer.
The OS market is stagnating, just as the communication markets stagnated before the break-up of AT&T. Let MS spin of the OS division. The consumer will benefit. The shareholder will benefit. Ultimately the computer industry will benefit. |
