Do you mean a point in relationship to Netscape and AOL or about MS being a "Fluffy Bunny" regardless of any browser? Sure the current one is Firefox and as I remember IE had a big fat buffer over run issue and people were being directed to use Firefox. So "die hacking attempt" hurt IE. Now if you look closely at IE7 you can almost make out the little Firefox imbeded in the corner....Ha Ill bet you looked. In time MS will destroy Firefox too.
So if a company does something right, No other company should be allowed to use that for inspiration? Imagine a car company is the first to implement airbags in cars, saving lots of lives. Now by your logic, no other car company (especially the large corporations like GM, FORD and Daimler Chrysler who have a firm grip on the market) should be allowed to implement that feature?
Or, saying it differently, you place the interest of the small underdog company over the interest of the paying consumer!? And to support that thought you use the big corporations' alleged monopoly position.
Following all these threads I have done a little soul searching and have tried various 'alternatives' to MS recently. Linux especially is often touted as the 'good guy' alternative, with the Open Source philosophy behind it. Now with the best will in the world I cannot see how that would a serious alternative any time soon. First of, there are so many versions (or 'distros') that the very thing it stands for (Open Source) is also it's biggest enemy towards market share gain. I have tried several 'distros' in the last couple of week, but not one, I repeat NOT ONE!, would install on my PC without hassle; Ubuntu (touted as the user friendly distro) gave an error code followed by a reboot, without any hint of what to do to solve it. So I tried Sabayon (touted as the performance distro with a native aero-like interface). Again, it would not install. After nearly a week of searching on various forums I finally managed to get it installed (using a Vesa VGA driver), but with the best will in the world I could not get my Geforce 8800 installed, despite drivers being available from nVidia (who said again that vista's DRM would kill support for Linux drivers? they're there, go look 'em up...). Sabayon uses the phrase 'it just works', but after a week of frustration and however much I wanted to give it a fair shot 'it just didn't work'. If Linux wants to be a Windows alternative, it has to let go of the whole elitist console commands, and offer mouse driven installers with a GUI and a trouble shooter.
MS isn't killing-off Linux, Linux is killing-off Linux. I am an experienced computer user, and have used several different OS' in the past 20 years. Is MS a monopoly because they have 'killed-off' competitors, used hostile take-overs and stole competitors ideas to obtain that position? Or is MS in their dominant position because no one has put up a viable alternative (and I mean an alternative with support for a distant future over several years, companies/individuals don't change their entire software environment based on one hit program or fancy distro)?
And as long as Apple maintains their stance that 'Apple only runs on Apple' (IE last generation PC components, DRMed to a point that only those will run OSX), only for the sake of maintaing the 'stability crown' (if it only runs on four different configurations, there is only so much that can go wrong), they are basically their own obstacle towards a bigger market share, MS has nothing to do with that.
Why aren't any games developped for Linux or OSX? Because MS owns DX? Or because Apple hasn't put in any effort to offer any good development tools that would make it interesting to develop for their platform (surely with the user install base Apple has at the moment, still millions, and the severe lack of game competition on that platform, this creates a huge incentive for a game developer to develop for that platform, instead of for an overcrowded market like windows?). And Linux is still such an archaic bunch of non supported and non unified distros (as it has been for years), that developing a commercial product is a severe risk for any developer. Open Source sounds noble, but for a developer that wants to make money on their products I don't see how this is a benefit...?
I would like nothing more than to have a choice of alternatives to the windows OS, alternatives that still allow me to freely choose my hardware, and alternatives to would show a commitment to offer support and compatibility on a long term basis. No such alternative exists today, nor has any company aspired to offer such an alternative...Is MS to blame for that? If Windows is really such a horrible OS, surely there is a HUGE market opportunity for anything that can compete? All companies have to do is stop creating 'niche markets' for their software/OS and focus on the big prize; average Joe...
Sorry for the long post (again), but I think a lot people are bashing MS because it seems like the thing to do, forgetting that the PC market is what it is today, largely thanks to MS and its long term investments...
May have to discuss this with the guys to see if they think it would be a fair sticky.
Even I have a sticky in the Other. haha
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