From owner-freebsd-questions Wed Nov 28 21: 1:40 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from y3k.shacknet.nu (morr0652.gti.net [208.216.122.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id BC99D37B416 for ; Wed, 28 Nov 2001 21:01:32 -0800 (PST) Received: from shacknet.nu (localhost.gti.net [127.0.0.1]) by y3k.shacknet.nu (8.11.6/8.11.6) with SMTP id fAT58PY30790; Thu, 29 Nov 2001 00:08:26 -0500 (EST) (envelope-from y3k@gti.net) Received: from 208.216.122.52 (SquirrelMail authenticated user mark) by y3k.shacknet.nu with HTTP; Thu, 29 Nov 2001 00:08:26 -0500 (EST) Message-ID: <3642.208.216.122.52.1007010506.squirrel@y3k.shacknet.nu> Date: Thu, 29 Nov 2001 00:08:26 -0500 (EST) Subject: Re: Feeding the Troll (Was: freebsd as a desktop ?) From: "Mark Yeck" To: anthony@freebie.atkielski.com In-Reply-To: <018601c1788d$09eb4520$0a00000a@atkielski.com> References: <018601c1788d$09eb4520$0a00000a@atkielski.com> Cc: y3k@gti.net, questions@FreeBSD.ORG X-Mailer: SquirrelMail (version 1.0.6) MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > Mark writes: > The obvious question, then, is: How did Microsoft ever come to > dominate any market, if its dominance depends on already being > dominant? From what I saw during the years of Microsoft's rise, the came to dominate the market through a combination of their own wise business decisions and unwise decisions of their competitors, mainly Apple and IBM who made a plethora of poor decisions, and the UNIX vendors who mostly chose to target a completely different market than Microsoft. Microsoft dominated the PC desktop and UNIX vendors dominated high end RISC workstation desktops. As PC hardware became more powerful and their price remained about the same, they began to compete very well with lower end RISC workstations, moving Microsoft into markets that were solidly dominated by UNIX. Technical superiority or desktop usability had almost no role in their rise to dominance. [arguement 1 snipped] > At least 99.9% of desktop users are just like your mother. > > That's one argument in favor of Windows. [arguement 2 snipped] > That's two. [arguement 3 snipped] > That's three. > > For someone who seems to doubt the superiority of Windows on the > desktop, you certainly are arguing persuasively in its favor. Indeed. Three somewhat powerful arguements. None of them related to any sort of technical superiority. I'm no FreeBSD zealot, but in almost all technical respects including usability on the desktop, I find it superior to Windows. There are plenty of reasons to use Microsoft products. My point is that these reasons are all directly related to market dominance and not superior design. In fact, here's another one that I forgot: because of the dominance of Windows, all hardware vendors make sure to have Windows drivers for their products when they are released. Most wont provide a UNIX driver until later, if at all. This has nothing to do with who has the superior design, and everything to do with market dominance. -mark To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message