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Date:      Sat, 1 Dec 2001 22:56:25 +0100
From:      "Anthony Atkielski" <anthony@freebie.atkielski.com>
To:        "Mike Meyer" <mwm@mired.org>
Cc:        "Mike Meyer" <mwm@mired.org>, <tlambert2@mindspring.com>, "Ted Mittelstaedt" <tedm@toybox.placo.com>, <chat@freebsd.org>
Subject:   Re: Feeding the Troll (Was: freebsd as a desktop ?)
Message-ID:  <002501c17ab3$07f0f0d0$0a00000a@atkielski.com>
References:  <000301c17a40$8fc78dc0$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com><010d01c17a44$98b491e0$0a00000a@atkielski.com><3C08A204.3CA7014C@mindspring.com><002e01c17a5f$f2b34040$1401a8c0@tedm.placo.com><000c01c17a7c$4de06710$0a00000a@atkielski.com><15369.53.739857.967952@guru.mired.org><000a01c17ab0$266fabd0$0a00000a@atkielski.com> <15369.20345.689585.495352@guru.mired.org>

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Mike writes:

> Yes, but I'm buying Intel products. MS's business
> practices cost me money even though I *don't* buy
> their products.

And Intel's don't?  That's not what Cyrix or AMD would say.

> That's sort of like saying that the spread of
> Christianity during the middle ages has no influence
> on it's popularity today.

Windows was a completely different environment from MS-DOS, and initially Apple
did windows better than Microsoft.  There were many chances for destiny to shift
in the direction of some other company, but thanks to good decisions by
Microsoft and egregiously poor decisions on the part of certain other companies
(such as A****), Microsoft retained the lead.

> If IBM had bought the OS outright - which they
> wanted to do - instead of licensing a version from MS,
> the IT world would be a completely different place
> today.

If Apple had priced its computers more competitively, the world would also be a
very different place today.

> Being the default OS on the first desktop computer
> acceptable to the IT industry is hardly "trivial".

Nobody even remembers CP/M.

> They have continued to make good decisions
> on a regular enough basis to have not lost
> that dominance.

In other words, their initial decisions concerning MS-DOS did _not_ determine
their success for eternity, in direct contrast to what you assert above.

> ... they keep plugging away until they reach
> "good enough" and then stop, which is a good
> business decision.

Just about every company that has ever tried to build the _best_ of anything has
either failed or never advanced beyond the size it had in the beginning.  Very
few people want to pay for the best--which makes perfect sense, since by
definition, they will accept "good enough."




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