Quote from: old_blaggard on October 10, 2007, 07:18:20 PM
Yeah, Microsoft's monopoly is pretty scary. There is an online magazine that contrasts Apple, Microsoft, and other big computer companies, and it's well worth a look at some of its articles:
http://test.roughlydrafted.com
Edit: Wow... apparently it has moved to a new location over the past 24 hours . I updated the link.
*Ahem*, to be clear that is not a "non-partisan" (as it were) site, the author is something more of a Mac advocate/appreciator. To call it "intensely biased" might be a bit much, but still...
And as much as Microsoft's monopoly has its drawbacks, I really don't find it "scary" at all, and I think it's frankly irresponsible to ignore the value of such broad standardization that it has brought. Even Apple has benefitted from it through sheer market force. With Apple as essentially the sole relevant and mainstream desktop computer alternative, they have enjoyed a virtual secondary monopoly. Imagine if the computing industry continued as it was before Microsoft became dominant - 1000 flavors of hardware and software, few compatible with each other. Apple would have a lot harder time getting software developers to favor them with broad competition like that. And if they did succeed, it's possible they would now be the monopoly MS is, only with locked-in hardware you could very safely bet on much higher buy-in cost.
So yeah, MS is evil and all, but it has also made our modern computing world a remarkably convenient place, despite the bugs, crashes, blue screens, whatever. I'll take Windows XP over 100 flavors of "DOS" any day.
- Oshyan