[staylowandkeepmoving]

Right on. If you want a great analysis of why the Wintel systems achieved dominance, read John Sculley's book, Odyssey (written when he was hot); he describes the argument he and Steve Jobs had about price points for the Mac (Sculley won).

What are you studying?

[MonroeDNA]

Haven't read the book, but took assembly language programming for both the x86 chips (Intel) and the 68000 series (Motorolla).

The intel chips are insanely complicated compared to the Motorolla series. The Motorolla series was so good, the VME bus (mostly Europe) developed around it. Here in the US, Apple chose Motorolla; MS stayed with the Intel.

Apple made the stupid decision to keep their system "closed." They would have dominated the world if they ahd opened it.

Marketing weenies at Apple wanted to control the "3rd party" cards.

Lesson: NEVER let Marketing make major decisions about stuff they know nothing about. They'll kill your company.