Microsoft’s biggest asset was its biggest competitor - IBM.
IBM had a better “graphic interface” operating system - OS - but, it had no real vision of a future that was PC-centric - applications ON the desktop, open networks, client-server computing across those networks; and it had ZERO business acumen for developing an application development community, outside of IBM, for its OS; and it had vested interests in some major, and major business size, clients who did not have any vision either and actually feared IBM NOT investing enough in the legacy systems they were running.
IBM did have all the TECHNICAL ability to compete with Microsoft on the PC desktop; and at the start it had superior technical ideas, and a superior bank account to do that.
Microsoft won the race because in spite of all the technical, knowledge, skill and financial superiority that IBM possessed, it did not understand HOW to run the race, the challenge, that Microsoft put before it.
Microsoft won by default, not because Windows began as some “superior” system, but because IBM failed to use its superior assets to mount a superior method of competition.
Microsoft’s greatest asset was NEVER its technology, it was its marketing savy and IBM’s errors.