VERY nice post. I see one big difference between now and then. When Windows 3.0 hit the road, MS-DOS was a very stable OS. If the DOS program running on top of it was well-made, nothing would crash the PC, and it would be very, very easy to install and handle.
Today, people expect software to be more stable and even easier to handle - it just isn't. Unix technologies suddenly have a stability record that Microsoft cannot ignore. With Mac OS X, the Linux community etc., Microsoft also has a marketing problem.
With Microsoft.Net, it seems that Microsoft wants to bet it's future on being a programming tool provider, setting the protocol standards and delivering the best programming tools. Unfortunately, they have never been best in these areas, and the competition is much fiercer than in the OS scene.
When Delphi for Linux comes out, it will be hard to market a programming tool, that hasn't been ported to Linux.
But on the other hand, the product named "Microsoft Linux" cannot be much further away than 2-5 years. |
