How do you think MSFT got the position it has today?
By out-marketing the competition.
Ok, but that's about as informative as Reg's perpetual "brilliant management" matra. It doesn't tell us much. What I'd say, from my allegedly naive CS/technologist perspective, is that Microsoft needs to be understood, and things like "brilliant management/outmarketing the competition" don't particularly help in understanding Microsoft very much.
But it's also true that technology becomes progressively more integrated over time. I used to run Trumpet but was glad to get rid of it once Windows 95 shipped with an integrated TCP/IP stack.
Right, and Unix systems had integrated TCP/IP since there was a tcp/ip to integrate, only about 15 years before Win95 hit the streets. And, PC hardware had basicly greater hardware capability than the VAX/BSD system that the TCP/IP internet grew up on since the 386 hit the streets in 1985. But, due to Microsoft's brilliant marketing, it was 1995 before people could run 32bit programs on the 32bit hardware Intel had been so graciously providing since 1985.
Plenty of people screwed up with Unix, of course. Bill did his part negotiating that brilliant contract with AT&T "to prevent Unix fragmenting", where Microsoft got $15 per license "in perpetuity". Poor SCO, inheritor of the battered AT&T Unix pieces, was probably paying more to Microsoft than they were earning. Until those dastardly EU judges let them off the hook a month or so ago. But, of course, Bill says SCO is a "valued partner", or some such Microsoftese. Microsoft lawyers had something to do with that deal, too.
Browsing capability is hardly a novelty these days and should be a basic OS function.
That, of course, depends on what "basic OS function" means. I'd say, a browser is an application program, and the OS should provide services, like the integrated TCP/IP that Microsoft provided about 10 years late, to build applications like browsers with. Microsoft, of course, has its own definition of OS, which it doesn't much feel like getting pinned down on.
The answer is not to pine away for the old days of disaggregation and roll-your-own piecemeal systems but to move up the food chain and compete on a higher functional level.
And just cede control of the OS to Microsoft, so they can redefine it as they go along and claim those parts of the food chain that look most lucrative to them. Like, there's pretty respectable sounding speech regcognition software available now, none of it from Microsoft that I know of, but Bill's got his long-standing preemptive claim on that already. I imagine there'd be more competiton and innovation in that field without Bill's long shadow, but who knows? Maybe Microsoft's already got this really cool thing in the lab that's just waiting for NT2k, or maybe Bill will play the current leaders off each other, and get the usual Microsoft deal for the annointed one that is deemed worthy of "OS integration".
It's been a while, so I'll repeat an old line. Microsoft has some fine products, and generally they are available at a pretty good price. But, but, but. Every time you scratch beneath the surface, you see something like the stolen DEC code at the core of NT, or the "Chinese Wall" between OS and app departments that Ballmer (ethically, courteously no doubt) claimed during Windows 3 development, later amended to "flying in formation".
That's the nature of the technology business.
Is this like "the necessity of a proprietary lock in business", later amended to high tech business? As an old time CS type, my counter to that is that Wintel is a single, fairly pecular point in a vast design space. The mass market and big installed base make it very cost effective, but technically, it's far from optimal. Do you think that Microsoft is doing a reasonable job of looking for something better? I think they're far too busy worrying about "Embrace and Demolish" on the Java front, but that's just me. Java looks like the best bet now for opening up that design space a little, and the developer's world is hot for it. Microsoft of course is doing its best to keep the design space closed and bring it under the monopolistic death grip. They might win too, though I think their strategy is so transparently self serving that it's laughable.
Maybe Bill will continue to extend his monopolistic grip "up the food chain", as you say, but on the hearts and minds front, the ilk mentality seems to be a bit of a roadblock. I'd never dream I'd be in sympathy with the cable guys, but they seem as suspicious of Bill as I am. Bankers, Newspapermen, TV, you name it. Bill ain't sneaking up on anybody these days. As to why Microsoft should get antitrust immunity, well, the democratic process is as open to you and Bill's lobbyists as to anybody.
Oops, in-house counsel just noted another dissertation. I'll admit to obsession here, when it comes right down to it I think the internet thing is just too important to give over to Bill's monopolistic death grip without a fight. As I've posted with almost equal volume here, I don't think "OS/browser" integration is at all the technical gordian knot that Microsoft's lawyers claim it is. We'll see what the experts have to say, and who can teach the Judge the best. I'd advise Microsoft to come up with a better line that "If you take out these 228 files, Windows is hosed." The ilk will have an answer for that one, rest assured.
Cheers, Dan. |
