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Microsoft is an evil anti-trust empire?
Imagine if auto makers decided to use 3 or 4 different gas types for "their" car model. Imagine being able to only go to 1 of 3 or 4 gas stations because your car supports only brand "x".
Sometimes monopolies are good.
Applied to computers, imagine having 3 or 4 different OS's, all equal in popularity. Imagine being a developer having to write your product code for each of the OS's lest you be missing out on a major chunk of revenue because your stuff only works on one of those OS's. Writing apps for different OS's like Mac, Win, Unix isn't just a matter of running the code through different compilers. Each code base has to be tailored. Without Microsoft's dominance of one OS, small time developers would all but be eliminated because they can't afford the time and money to code for 4 different OS's (and reach all the potential markets) nor can they afford to code for one or two OS's and sell to only a small part of the market. Only the big application boys with big resources could play.
I think people, when bashing Microsoft, do so because we only can see the present. We can't see the alternative time line of what things would be like with true comptitition, at least in the OS market. I suspect computing would be a lot less farther along if we had legitimate choice. Without Windows, could you honestly say the internet would be where it is today?
I'll take a "lesser" standard over a superior niche anyday.
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