OT Bill Gates tells senators "we need more foreign programmers to remain competitive"

Charlie Wilkes wrote:

On Sun, 02 Apr 2006 05:46:46 -0500, David Maynard
wrote:


Charlie Wilkes wrote:


On Sun, 02 Apr 2006 06:15:51 +0200, Mxsmanic
wrote:



Charlie Wilkes writes:



Well, if the Mac OS will run on PCs, Apple will have relinquished its
closed architecture.

It doesn't run on PCs.


Connect the dots. Apple has gone to Intel, and their OS is
unix-based. They are ready to challenge MS again, but the cost will
be the loss of their proprietary hardware.

Apple has a history of taking risks, most of which don't pay off, but
they have hung in there. I think their perilous history has poised
them to take advantage of device proliferation.

MS has succeeded consistently because of risk aversion and ruthless
exploitation of their dominant position.

You've got a chicken and the egg dilemma with your scenario. They couldn't
have a 'dominate' position before they succeeded with something so it can't
be the 'dominate' position that allowed them to succeed in the first place.


They succeeded in making a sale to IBM,

A rather impressive coup considering they were not the presumptive supplier
when IBM bought the PC design.

and IBM did the heavy lifting
for them.

IBM did very little 'lifting' in the software department as they considered
it an unfortunate burden to selling the hardware.

It was Microsoft's vision to be a 'software company' at a time when most of
the rest figured the money was in hardware.

DOS wasn't exactly an MS innovation.

There are very few unqualified 'innovations', they're usually closer to
evolutions. CPM was cloned off of DEC's O.S. and Linux was cloned off of
Unix. Even the mouse is little more than an upside down trackball.

Win 3x... well, it
worked.

And that was saying a lot at the time, more than the competition could.

But the real secret was Word, which MS provided to Apple. Word was the big
ticket item and Windows ran it, which was the purpose behind developing
Windows: a means to run Word on IBM compatible PCs.

9x? XP? Reactive engineering, every step of the way.

Reactive to what?


They wait until something is
a clear winner, and then buy it in. But they can't control cell
phones, media players, home theaters, automotive computers, and
everything else all at the same time.

MS has never developed anything worthwhile on their own, and they
always look foolish when they try.

Your knowledge of Microsoft's history is apparently lacking but that's an


Sorry, I forgot Microsoft Bob.


interesting 'complaint' to make visa vie Apple when they've abandoned their
own O.S. for something they perceive an already developed 'clear winner'.


Making the help file into a
cartoon paper clip... that's MS innovation.

Close. Rather extensive context sensitive English language help and wizards
are more like it. Something the open source community has a tendency to
dismiss, or think that slapping up a man page qualifies as. If a car were
as 'O.S.' the difference for 'start car help' would be akin to: MS help
tells you to insert key, labeled "ignition key," into ignition switch on
steering wheel column. Turn key to the right till motor starts, then
release. Move transmission lever on center console to D... In Linux you'd
get an exploded engineering drawing of the automobile and the text
beginning with internal combustion theory, the history of gears and
materials technology as a background prelude to explaining the reason for
every nut and bolt in the thing so you can make the car do 'whatever you
want' by re-engineering it, except you'd have to find the Libc gas station
and decide whether you wanted to use, and install, the gnome ignition key
system or one of the 15 others that 'come with it' (see 'appropriate' man
page) bearing in mind you've got a KDE radio and your transmission isn't
fully supported yet (see man transmission).


Yeah, what you're talking about is writing good documentation.

"Good documentation" is not the same as good help, otherwise the exploded
engineering drawing in my example would be 'good'.

Techies are averse to any kind of knowledge sharing and they are
purposefully obscure.

No, it's companies that are averse to sharing information but techies love
to demonstrate their technical expertise and wax forever on even the most
obscure details. It's just that they're usually lousy writers and tend to
presume 'everyone' knows planck's constant, and if you don't why bother?

But any company with a decent staff can do it
if they are motivated.

That's a lot of IFs not even counting the ones you left out.

Apple did try to capitalize on that, once, with their ads of how their
instruction manual was only this |--| thick but I can imagine some
wondering if that was simply because they left out half of it. Not saying
they did, just that touting size alone doesn't prove anything as I've seen
extremely short instructions that were also extremely bad.

Plenty of software companies produce good
docs.

'Docs' are not a help subsystem.


Sell 'em short, I say. You'll be rich.

Charlie

That, btw, is one reason why MS succeeded.


snip

On Sun, 02 Apr 2006 23:43:41 -0500, David Maynard
wrote:

Charlie Wilkes wrote:

On Sun, 02 Apr 2006 05:46:46 -0500, David Maynard
wrote:


Charlie Wilkes wrote:


On Sun, 02 Apr 2006 06:15:51 +0200, Mxsmanic
wrote:



Charlie Wilkes writes:



Well, if the Mac OS will run on PCs, Apple will have relinquished its
closed architecture.

It doesn't run on PCs.


Connect the dots. Apple has gone to Intel, and their OS is
unix-based. They are ready to challenge MS again, but the cost will
be the loss of their proprietary hardware.

Apple has a history of taking risks, most of which don't pay off, but
they have hung in there. I think their perilous history has poised
them to take advantage of device proliferation.

MS has succeeded consistently because of risk aversion and ruthless
exploitation of their dominant position.

You've got a chicken and the egg dilemma with your scenario. They couldn't
have a 'dominate' position before they succeeded with something so it can't
be the 'dominate' position that allowed them to succeed in the first place.


They succeeded in making a sale to IBM,

A rather impressive coup considering they were not the presumptive supplier
when IBM bought the PC design.

Sure. Gates is a good businessman.

and IBM did the heavy lifting
for them.

IBM did very little 'lifting' in the software department as they considered
it an unfortunate burden to selling the hardware.

They established the PC as the dominant platform, and MS-DOS therefore
became the dominant OS. If a different platform with a different
operating system had prevailed over the PC, MS might be a historical
footnote.

It was Microsoft's vision to be a 'software company' at a time when most of
the rest figured the money was in hardware.

Gates has a nose for money.

DOS wasn't exactly an MS innovation.

There are very few unqualified 'innovations', they're usually closer to
evolutions. CPM was cloned off of DEC's O.S. and Linux was cloned off of
Unix. Even the mouse is little more than an upside down trackball.

Win 3x... well, it
worked.

And that was saying a lot at the time, more than the competition could.

It is hard to make the case that Win 3x was as good as Mac OS 6, but
it had the installed base, thanks to the IBM PC and IBM's decision to
go with open architecture.

But the real secret was Word, which MS provided to Apple. Word was the big
ticket item and Windows ran it, which was the purpose behind developing
Windows: a means to run Word on IBM compatible PCs.

No, I can't buy that premise. Any kind of DPMI would have sufficed
for a word processing platform. MS developed Windows because the
market wanted a multitasking environment.

9x? XP? Reactive engineering, every step of the way.

Reactive to what?

Reactive to new technologies developed outside Redmond, like the
Netscape browser.


They wait until something is
a clear winner, and then buy it in. But they can't control cell
phones, media players, home theaters, automotive computers, and
everything else all at the same time.

MS has never developed anything worthwhile on their own, and they
always look foolish when they try.

Your knowledge of Microsoft's history is apparently lacking but that's an


Sorry, I forgot Microsoft Bob.


interesting 'complaint' to make visa vie Apple when they've abandoned their
own O.S. for something they perceive an already developed 'clear winner'.


Making the help file into a
cartoon paper clip... that's MS innovation.

Close. Rather extensive context sensitive English language help and wizards
are more like it. Something the open source community has a tendency to
dismiss, or think that slapping up a man page qualifies as. If a car were
as 'O.S.' the difference for 'start car help' would be akin to: MS help
tells you to insert key, labeled "ignition key," into ignition switch on
steering wheel column. Turn key to the right till motor starts, then
release. Move transmission lever on center console to D... In Linux you'd
get an exploded engineering drawing of the automobile and the text
beginning with internal combustion theory, the history of gears and
materials technology as a background prelude to explaining the reason for
every nut and bolt in the thing so you can make the car do 'whatever you
want' by re-engineering it, except you'd have to find the Libc gas station
and decide whether you wanted to use, and install, the gnome ignition key
system or one of the 15 others that 'come with it' (see 'appropriate' man
page) bearing in mind you've got a KDE radio and your transmission isn't
fully supported yet (see man transmission).


Yeah, what you're talking about is writing good documentation.

"Good documentation" is not the same as good help, otherwise the exploded
engineering drawing in my example would be 'good'.

Techies are averse to any kind of knowledge sharing and they are
purposefully obscure.

No, it's companies that are averse to sharing information but techies love
to demonstrate their technical expertise and wax forever on even the most
obscure details. It's just that they're usually lousy writers and tend to
presume 'everyone' knows planck's constant, and if you don't why bother?

But any company with a decent staff can do it
if they are motivated.

That's a lot of IFs not even counting the ones you left out.

I've gone through a lot of software manuals. I can't see that MS has
done anything unique, or uniquely well, with their help files or any
other aspect of their documentation.

Apple did try to capitalize on that, once, with their ads of how their
instruction manual was only this |--| thick but I can imagine some
wondering if that was simply because they left out half of it. Not saying
they did, just that touting size alone doesn't prove anything as I've seen
extremely short instructions that were also extremely bad.

I couldn't agree more. I often find myself wanting more details. I
would say a skinny manual for something as complex as a modern OS is
simply a denial of reality.

I'm not a Mac user, much less enthusiast. I use Windows and I like it
fine. But, I recognize that it is designed to suppress competition by
taking other people's bright ideas and baking them into the OS. That
has worked for years, but I don't think it will work much longer,
because there are too many different platforms, and MS can't control
them all with closed, proprietary code.

Charlie

Plenty of software companies produce good
docs.

'Docs' are not a help subsystem.


Sell 'em short, I say. You'll be rich.

Charlie

That, btw, is one reason why MS succeeded.


snip

"David Maynard" wrote in message
...
Charlie Wilkes wrote:

On Sun, 02 Apr 2006 05:46:46 -0500, David Maynard
wrote:


Charlie Wilkes wrote:


On Sun, 02 Apr 2006 06:15:51 +0200, Mxsmanic
wrote:



Charlie Wilkes writes:



Well, if the Mac OS will run on PCs, Apple will have relinquished its
closed architecture.

It doesn't run on PCs.


Connect the dots. Apple has gone to Intel, and their OS is
unix-based. They are ready to challenge MS again, but the cost will
be the loss of their proprietary hardware.

Apple has a history of taking risks, most of which don't pay off, but
they have hung in there. I think their perilous history has poised
them to take advantage of device proliferation.

MS has succeeded consistently because of risk aversion and ruthless
exploitation of their dominant position.

You've got a chicken and the egg dilemma with your scenario. They
couldn't have a 'dominate' position before they succeeded with something
so it can't be the 'dominate' position that allowed them to succeed in
the first place.


They succeeded in making a sale to IBM,

A rather impressive coup considering they were not the presumptive
supplier when IBM bought the PC design.

The "impressive" part of that coup was that Gates managed to maintain the
intellectual rights to Dos when he contracted with IBM. If he hadn't of done
that, I wonder where MS would be today? That fuzzy-face kid made the deal of
the century and I respect him for it. People seem to forget that Gates was
the little guy taking on the IBM giant for several years after that.

Ed

snipped for brevity

A clown who hasn't figured out that Microsoft holds monopoly power.


David Maynard nospam private.net wrote:

Path: newsdbm05.news.prodigy.com!newsdbm04.news.prodigy. com!newsdst02.news.prodigy.com!prodigy.com!newscon 02.news.prodigy.com!prodigy.net!nx02.iad01.newshos ting.com!newshosting.com!216.196.98.140.MISMATCH!b order1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!new sfeed00.sul.t-online.de!newsfeed01.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!news.germany.com!sn-xt-sjc-02!sn-xt-sjc-06!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail
From: David Maynard nospam private.net
Newsgroups: alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Subject: OT Bill Gates tells senators "we need more foreign programmers to remain competitive"
Date: Sat, 01 Apr 2006 03:54:24 -0600
Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com
Message-ID: 122sjegg0ekfidd corp.supernews.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax)
X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
MIME-Version: 1.0
References: Xns9795EC3699674follydom 207.115.17.102 122oi973ilgpr96 corp.supernews.com Xns97969C30FD367follydom 207.115.17.102
In-Reply-To: Xns97969C30FD367follydom 207.115.17.102
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Complaints-To: abuse supernews.com
Lines: 61
Xref: prodigy.net alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt:462837

Troll trolling


John Doe wrote:

My post was properly labeled off-topic and posted to an associated group.

But I wanted to ask David Maynard again anyway, does Microsoft
possess monopoly power over the personal computer desktop operating
system market? In other words, is Windows a monopoly?


David Maynard nospam private.net wrote:


Path: newssvr11.news.prodigy.com!newsdbm04.news.prodigy. com!newsdst01.news.prodigy.com!newsmst01b.news.pro digy.com!prodigy.com!newscon02.news.prodigy.com!pr odigy.net!news.glorb.com!tudelft.nl!txtfeed1.tudel ft.nl!feeder3.cambrium.nl!feeder4.cambrium.nl!feed .tweaknews.nl!138.199.65.86.MISMATCH!sn-ams-06!sn-xt-ams-03!sn-post-ams-02!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail
From: David Maynard nospam private.net
Newsgroups: alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Subject: OT Bill Gates tells senators "we need more foreign programmers to remain competitive"
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 15:09:58 -0600
Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com
Message-ID: 122oi973ilgpr96 corp.supernews.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax)
X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
MIME-Version: 1.0
References: Xns9795EC3699674follydom 207.115.17.102
In-Reply-To: Xns9795EC3699674follydom 207.115.17.102
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Complaints-To: abuse supernews.com
Lines: 30
Xref: prodigy.net alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt:462751

Troll

John Doe wrote:


Bill Gates was in Washington this week, as usual lobbying for an
increase in H-1B visas. The richest man in the world earned his keep
when he looked our president in the eye and (without laughing) said
"Microsoft needs cheap, easy to control foreign programmers to
remain competitive". Both Bill Gates and our president probably get
a good laugh out of that one.

Microsoft doesn't want to pay for education and training of American
programmers. Instead of giving Americans the jobs, Microsoft would
rather import easy to control low-wage programmers. Since
Americans are under strict intellectual property law, they do
however have to pay to maintain Microsoft's empire. On the other
hand, many other countries have no intellectual property law or
don't enforce it, so they get Windows for free. The easy to
control imported programmer sends much of his Microsoft money home
to where his countrymen don't even pay for Windows.

That can't be good for our economy. There's something very wrong
about the New World order especially as it relates to intellectual
property.

Demented troll trolling.

John Doe wrote:

A clown who hasn't figured out that Microsoft holds monopoly power.


David Maynard nospam private.net wrote:


Path: newsdbm05.news.prodigy.com!newsdbm04.news.prodigy. com!newsdst02.news.prodigy.com!prodigy.com!newscon 02.news.prodigy.com!prodigy.net!nx02.iad01.newshos ting.com!newshosting.com!216.196.98.140.MISMATCH!b order1.nntp.dca.giganews.com!nntp.giganews.com!new sfeed00.sul.t-online.de!newsfeed01.sul.t-online.de!t-online.de!news.germany.com!sn-xt-sjc-02!sn-xt-sjc-06!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail
From: David Maynard nospam private.net
Newsgroups: alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Subject: OT Bill Gates tells senators "we need more foreign programmers to remain competitive"
Date: Sat, 01 Apr 2006 03:54:24 -0600
Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com
Message-ID: 122sjegg0ekfidd corp.supernews.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax)
X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
MIME-Version: 1.0
References: Xns9795EC3699674follydom 207.115.17.102 122oi973ilgpr96 corp.supernews.com Xns97969C30FD367follydom 207.115.17.102
In-Reply-To: Xns97969C30FD367follydom 207.115.17.102
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Complaints-To: abuse supernews.com
Lines: 61
Xref: prodigy.net alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt:462837

Troll trolling


John Doe wrote:


My post was properly labeled off-topic and posted to an associated group.

But I wanted to ask David Maynard again anyway, does Microsoft
possess monopoly power over the personal computer desktop operating
system market? In other words, is Windows a monopoly?


David Maynard nospam private.net wrote:



Path: newssvr11.news.prodigy.com!newsdbm04.news.prodigy. com!newsdst01.news.prodigy.com!newsmst01b.news.pro digy.com!prodigy.com!newscon02.news.prodigy.com!pr odigy.net!news.glorb.com!tudelft.nl!txtfeed1.tudel ft.nl!feeder3.cambrium.nl!feeder4.cambrium.nl!feed .tweaknews.nl!138.199.65.86.MISMATCH!sn-ams-06!sn-xt-ams-03!sn-post-ams-02!sn-post-01!supernews.com!corp.supernews.com!not-for-mail
From: David Maynard nospam private.net
Newsgroups: alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt
Subject: OT Bill Gates tells senators "we need more foreign programmers to remain competitive"
Date: Thu, 30 Mar 2006 15:09:58 -0600
Organization: Posted via Supernews, http://www.supernews.com
Message-ID: 122oi973ilgpr96 corp.supernews.com
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030624 Netscape/7.1 (ax)
X-Accept-Language: en-us, en
MIME-Version: 1.0
References: Xns9795EC3699674follydom 207.115.17.102
In-Reply-To: Xns9795EC3699674follydom 207.115.17.102
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Complaints-To: abuse supernews.com
Lines: 30
Xref: prodigy.net alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt:462751

Troll

John Doe wrote:



Bill Gates was in Washington this week, as usual lobbying for an
increase in H-1B visas. The richest man in the world earned his keep
when he looked our president in the eye and (without laughing) said
"Microsoft needs cheap, easy to control foreign programmers to
remain competitive". Both Bill Gates and our president probably get
a good laugh out of that one.

Microsoft doesn't want to pay for education and training of American
programmers. Instead of giving Americans the jobs, Microsoft would
rather import easy to control low-wage programmers. Since
Americans are under strict intellectual property law, they do
however have to pay to maintain Microsoft's empire. On the other
hand, many other countries have no intellectual property law or
don't enforce it, so they get Windows for free. The easy to
control imported programmer sends much of his Microsoft money home
to where his countrymen don't even pay for Windows.

That can't be good for our economy. There's something very wrong
about the New World order especially as it relates to intellectual
property.

Ed Medlin wrote:

"David Maynard" wrote in message
...

Charlie Wilkes wrote:


On Sun, 02 Apr 2006 05:46:46 -0500, David Maynard
wrote:



Charlie Wilkes wrote:



On Sun, 02 Apr 2006 06:15:51 +0200, Mxsmanic
wrote:




Charlie Wilkes writes:




Well, if the Mac OS will run on PCs, Apple will have relinquished its
closed architecture.

It doesn't run on PCs.


Connect the dots. Apple has gone to Intel, and their OS is
unix-based. They are ready to challenge MS again, but the cost will
be the loss of their proprietary hardware.

Apple has a history of taking risks, most of which don't pay off, but
they have hung in there. I think their perilous history has poised
them to take advantage of device proliferation.

MS has succeeded consistently because of risk aversion and ruthless
exploitation of their dominant position.

You've got a chicken and the egg dilemma with your scenario. They
couldn't have a 'dominate' position before they succeeded with something
so it can't be the 'dominate' position that allowed them to succeed in
the first place.


They succeeded in making a sale to IBM,

A rather impressive coup considering they were not the presumptive
supplier when IBM bought the PC design.


The "impressive" part of that coup was that Gates managed to maintain the
intellectual rights to Dos when he contracted with IBM. If he hadn't of done
that, I wonder where MS would be today? That fuzzy-face kid made the deal of
the century and I respect him for it. People seem to forget that Gates was
the little guy taking on the IBM giant for several years after that.

He did the same thing with Word at Apple.

From the modern perspective it certainly seems an incredible blunder on
both IBM and Apple's part but the modus operandi back in those days was
everyone's computer was proprietary anyway so it didn't matter, or so they
thought. Sell 'DOS' and that just meant that, or so the theory went, you
had to buy an IBM computer, which is what IBM wanted to sell anyway.

Ed

snipped for brevity

Charlie Wilkes wrote:

On Sun, 02 Apr 2006 23:43:41 -0500, David Maynard
wrote:


Charlie Wilkes wrote:


On Sun, 02 Apr 2006 05:46:46 -0500, David Maynard
wrote:



Charlie Wilkes wrote:



On Sun, 02 Apr 2006 06:15:51 +0200, Mxsmanic
wrote:




Charlie Wilkes writes:




Well, if the Mac OS will run on PCs, Apple will have relinquished its
closed architecture.

It doesn't run on PCs.


Connect the dots. Apple has gone to Intel, and their OS is
unix-based. They are ready to challenge MS again, but the cost will
be the loss of their proprietary hardware.

Apple has a history of taking risks, most of which don't pay off, but
they have hung in there. I think their perilous history has poised
them to take advantage of device proliferation.

MS has succeeded consistently because of risk aversion and ruthless
exploitation of their dominant position.

You've got a chicken and the egg dilemma with your scenario. They couldn't
have a 'dominate' position before they succeeded with something so it can't
be the 'dominate' position that allowed them to succeed in the first place.


They succeeded in making a sale to IBM,

A rather impressive coup considering they were not the presumptive supplier
when IBM bought the PC design.


Sure. Gates is a good businessman.

That's the name of the game, you know. But Gates wouldn't have gotten the
chance to be good at it if Digital Research hadn't first been so incredibly
bad.


and IBM did the heavy lifting
for them.

IBM did very little 'lifting' in the software department as they considered
it an unfortunate burden to selling the hardware.


They established the PC as the dominant platform,

Not really. The market did. All IBM had to do, and did, was buy an existing
design on the cheap and and slap their name on it. The rest was a foregone
conclusion.

At that time the 'micro-computer' market was mostly populated with various
small companies (an exception being Radio Shack) all with their own
proprietary hardware/software, mostly 'home' computers, and no one knew if
they'd be around next year, or the year after, or the year after that but
with IBM, the undisputed 'god' of computers, at least in the public's eye,
the 'uncertainty' was gone. You knew *they* would be around, not to mention
that, regardless of what was in it, the thing must be a 'real computer'
because it's an IBM. It's synonymous. You "just can't go wrong with an IBM."

and MS-DOS therefore
became the dominant OS.

Gates was perceptive enough to realize that and essentially gave DOS away
while Digital Research tossed the opportunity out the window, if you'll
pardon the pun.

If a different platform with a different
operating system had prevailed over the PC, MS might be a historical
footnote.

That falls into the flying pigs category.

It was Microsoft's vision to be a 'software company' at a time when most of
the rest figured the money was in hardware.


Gates has a nose for money.

And how many folks do you know of that go into business to lose money?


DOS wasn't exactly an MS innovation.

There are very few unqualified 'innovations', they're usually closer to
evolutions. CPM was cloned off of DEC's O.S. and Linux was cloned off of
Unix. Even the mouse is little more than an upside down trackball.


Win 3x... well, it
worked.

And that was saying a lot at the time, more than the competition could.


It is hard to make the case that Win 3x was as good as Mac OS 6,

That wasn't the competition. It don't run on an IBM PC.

but
it had the installed base, thanks to the IBM PC and IBM's decision to
go with open architecture.

IBM didn't make that decision. They had intended the system to be
proprietary by virtue of their BIOS but it was reverse engineered and that
was that.

They tried to put the cat back in the bag with the proprietary MCA bus and
were darn near scratched to death by it.

But the real secret was Word, which MS provided to Apple. Word was the big
ticket item and Windows ran it, which was the purpose behind developing
Windows: a means to run Word on IBM compatible PCs.


No, I can't buy that premise. Any kind of DPMI would have sufficed
for a word processing platform. MS developed Windows because the
market wanted a multitasking environment.

9x? XP? Reactive engineering, every step of the way.

Reactive to what?


Reactive to new technologies developed outside Redmond, like the
Netscape browser.

Well, shoot, every company reacts to that kind of thing, or goes out of
business.


They wait until something is
a clear winner, and then buy it in. But they can't control cell
phones, media players, home theaters, automotive computers, and
everything else all at the same time.

MS has never developed anything worthwhile on their own, and they
always look foolish when they try.

Your knowledge of Microsoft's history is apparently lacking but that's an


Sorry, I forgot Microsoft Bob.



interesting 'complaint' to make visa vie Apple when they've abandoned their
own O.S. for something they perceive an already developed 'clear winner'.



Making the help file into a
cartoon paper clip... that's MS innovation.

Close. Rather extensive context sensitive English language help and wizards
are more like it. Something the open source community has a tendency to
dismiss, or think that slapping up a man page qualifies as. If a car were
as 'O.S.' the difference for 'start car help' would be akin to: MS help
tells you to insert key, labeled "ignition key," into ignition switch on
steering wheel column. Turn key to the right till motor starts, then
release. Move transmission lever on center console to D... In Linux you'd
get an exploded engineering drawing of the automobile and the text
beginning with internal combustion theory, the history of gears and
materials technology as a background prelude to explaining the reason for
every nut and bolt in the thing so you can make the car do 'whatever you
want' by re-engineering it, except you'd have to find the Libc gas station
and decide whether you wanted to use, and install, the gnome ignition key
system or one of the 15 others that 'come with it' (see 'appropriate' man
page) bearing in mind you've got a KDE radio and your transmission isn't
fully supported yet (see man transmission).


Yeah, what you're talking about is writing good documentation.

"Good documentation" is not the same as good help, otherwise the exploded
engineering drawing in my example would be 'good'.


Techies are averse to any kind of knowledge sharing and they are
purposefully obscure.

No, it's companies that are averse to sharing information but techies love
to demonstrate their technical expertise and wax forever on even the most
obscure details. It's just that they're usually lousy writers and tend to
presume 'everyone' knows planck's constant, and if you don't why bother?


But any company with a decent staff can do it
if they are motivated.

That's a lot of IFs not even counting the ones you left out.


I've gone through a lot of software manuals. I can't see that MS has
done anything unique, or uniquely well, with their help files or any
other aspect of their documentation.

Then you must either like wading through tech manuals or still think a tech
manual is a help system, or both.


Apple did try to capitalize on that, once, with their ads of how their
instruction manual was only this |--| thick but I can imagine some
wondering if that was simply because they left out half of it. Not saying
they did, just that touting size alone doesn't prove anything as I've seen
extremely short instructions that were also extremely bad.


I couldn't agree more. I often find myself wanting more details. I
would say a skinny manual for something as complex as a modern OS is
simply a denial of reality.

I'm not a Mac user, much less enthusiast. I use Windows and I like it
fine. But, I recognize that it is designed to suppress competition by
taking other people's bright ideas and baking them into the OS.

Well, let's see how that works in other industries. Someone comes up with
air conditioning, that can go in a car. Did not all of them eventually come
up with their own? Someone comes up with the idea of an 'automatic
shifter'. Did not all of them eventually come up with their own version of
it? Someone comes up with a car radio. Did not all of them eventually come
up with their own take on it?

No one in their right mind leaves their product stagnant, or passes up a
good idea, if they intend to stay in business.

That
has worked for years, but I don't think it will work much longer,
because there are too many different platforms, and MS can't control
them all with closed, proprietary code.

You're too wrapped up in 'MS take over the world' conspiracy theories.
There have always been other platforms, and platforms MS was not involved
with because it isn't their business.


Charlie

Plenty of software companies produce good
docs.

'Docs' are not a help subsystem.


Sell 'em short, I say. You'll be rich.

Charlie


That, btw, is one reason why MS succeeded.


snip

On Tue, 04 Apr 2006 06:21:07 -0500, David Maynard
wrote:

Charlie Wilkes wrote:


That
has worked for years, but I don't think it will work much longer,
because there are too many different platforms, and MS can't control
them all with closed, proprietary code.

You're too wrapped up in 'MS take over the world' conspiracy theories.
There have always been other platforms, and platforms MS was not involved
with because it isn't their business.

I'm mostly interested in where things will go from here. Yes, there
have always been other computer platforms, but for consumers, the main
choice has been Windows or Mac. Now lots of gadgets are full-fledged
computers. Each requires an OS. Is Windows going to dominate them
all? I think developers will find it easier to start with an
open-source kernel.

At the same time, the desktop has matured. In the 1990s, every
upgrade brought important new capabilities. But why should the
average person upgrade to Vista?

The OS market is becoming fragmented. We'll see what that does to
Microsoft's market position and profits.

Charlie

Charlie Wilkes wrote:

On Tue, 04 Apr 2006 06:21:07 -0500, David Maynard
wrote:


Charlie Wilkes wrote:



That
has worked for years, but I don't think it will work much longer,
because there are too many different platforms, and MS can't control
them all with closed, proprietary code.

You're too wrapped up in 'MS take over the world' conspiracy theories.
There have always been other platforms, and platforms MS was not involved
with because it isn't their business.


I'm mostly interested in where things will go from here. Yes, there
have always been other computer platforms, but for consumers, the main
choice has been Windows or Mac.

And Linux and, if you go back a bit into the past, IBM's OS2, BeOS and if
you go back further GEM, Desqview and others.

The reason that's what consumers see is the main consumer item has been
desktop PCs.

Now lots of gadgets are full-fledged
computers. Each requires an OS. Is Windows going to dominate them
all? I think developers will find it easier to start with an
open-source kernel.

It depends on what the 'gadget' is and what it needs. MS's desktop strength
isn't 'an O.S.', it's the GUI and attendant bells and whistles. MS should,
or might, have some strength where the consumer wants their 'gadget' to
'look like their desktop' but that doesn't necessarily 'fit' in small
devices. They might also have an advantage by providing a 'light' whatever
with (semi) compatible APIs to leverage existing Windows programming. WinCE
is something like that as calling the full screen display 'windows' begs
the issue.


At the same time, the desktop has matured. In the 1990s, every
upgrade brought important new capabilities. But why should the
average person upgrade to Vista?

I don't know but I disagree with your premise as my memory recalls that
each version past Win95 has been panned as nothing really 'new'. It's only
in hindsight, after people are used to it, that they suddenly see
"important new capabilities."

The OS market is becoming fragmented. We'll see what that does to
Microsoft's market position and profits.

I repeat my point, the market has always been 'fragmented'. It only looks
monolithic to the 'consumer' who sees little but their desktop.


Charlie

Charlie Wilkes writes:

I think developers will find it easier to start with an
open-source kernel.

Open-source software usually isn't stable enough or sufficiently
responsive to the market.

At the same time, the desktop has matured. In the 1990s, every
upgrade brought important new capabilities. But why should the
average person upgrade to Vista?

There is no reason to upgrade to Vista.

The OS market is becoming fragmented.

Windows and Mac OS count as a fragmented market?

--
Transpose mxsmanic and gmail to reach me by e-mail.