Apple did this in 1984. Wasn't that when Apple fell off the tree? I think it was an Seattle Sue that crapped on the Apple after it fell.
Jobs has to be one of the stupidest men to ever head a big company. Both Gates and Jobs were shown the Graphical User Interface (Icons) developed in the Palo Alto research labs by Xerox. Both were impressed. Both decided to implement it.
Stupid Jobs decided to go from the Apple II to the Mac in one big jump. Gates knew that would be a disaster. No company running either DOS or Apple II was going to instantly transition to a graphical user interface. It would require a company to go from a command like interface to graphical in one jump. Companies demand time to gradually adopt new technology. To be successful an operating system had to support both the old (Character) and the new (Graphical) interface or be a very large failure.
The only group to stay with Apple were educators. If you need proof that educators don't understand the real world, just look at their decision to educate with a system used by far less than 10 percent of employers.
Jobs after the screw up of the LISA came out with the Mac. Which was totally incompatible with the Apple II.
Gates over a ten year period gradually went from DOS to Windows. Making sure that each version of Windows could support DOS applications. It was far more difficult than a clean break, but it was the only way to hold and grow market share.
It was a brilliant strategy. Apple lost market share by making the immediate transition. Gates gained market share by taking 10 years to make the transmission.
Gates faced the problem of how to make a single process, single user operating system compatable with a multi user multi process operating system. It would have been much much easier to just do a new multi user multi tasking operationg system. Jobs took the easy way out. It destroyed Apple's chance of ever being a major player again.
Companies like Lotus and Word Perfect went with copy protection to keep people from "stealing" their software. Gates did not. He knew the people taking the software were mostly employees of big corporations. Gates knew they would have their company buy a "stealable" software rather than buy a better software that they couldn't steal. There was no way the employees were going to buy personal copies of Word Perfect and Lotus. Typical of Gates oppostion, they only looked at their spreadsheets. Gates understood what was really happening and what real customers would do.
Gates watched Word and Excel take nearly all the market share from the superior products of Lotus and Word Perfect.
If you argue that Gates doesn't know what he is doing, then you have to confront the fact that the people at Apple, Lotus and Word Perfect knew even less.
Jobs only understood what the technology could do and did it. Jobs focused on what he wanted to do. Gates focused on what customers wanted.
At every stage of the contest, Gates understood how consumers would react to technology and sales policy. Gates gave them what they wanted.
When the competition is as inept as Microsoft's competition, Gates did not have to be very good at doing the right thing. Microsoft was the only one doing the right thing.
No company running either DOS or Apple II was going to instantly transition to a graphical user interface. I remember all of those DOS programmers who swore they would never use a mouse, and a lot of them still have a DOS mentality in 2005. For the vast majority of users, the ability to run a program written in 1981 is not essential - especially considering all of the bugs and security problems associated with obsolete environments.
Gates focused on what customers wanted.
Sure, everyone knows that Microsoft's customers wanted a big stinking pile of worms, viruses and spyware. And Gates delivered.
So, do you wake up and kiss your icon of Bill Gates every morning, and kiss him good night, as well.
You made a nice long post, full of bull feces...
The only reason ms did better was from gum't bizness requiring private bizness to submit on 5 1/4 in wordperfect...
The reason educators chose Mac was the result of a marketing decision by Apple. They demonstrated a simple-to-use mouse-driven appliance to them, and they bought it. Nobody needed to learn C> commands. My, then 3 yr old, daughter used my new Mac in 1984, with little direction from me...
And lastly, so what? I will continue to use my Macs... and my Apple stock has made me a over 700% in the past two years!
Longhorn will not make Windoze any better. It will just make the pc "network administrator" wonks earn their pay installing and debugging the crap!
Me, I'll just get my 15 yr old daughter to take care of our 7 computers, when we get the latest from the core...
