No sorrow here. Microsoft cheats. Microsoft used its operating system to promote Word which killed off Word Perfect. Microsoft used its operating system to promote Excel which killed off Lotus 1,2,3. Microsoft used its operating system to promote Explorer which killed off Netscape.
Microsoft stole Apple’s technology to develop Windows. Apple only responded in court too late and too little.
No question about it, Microsoft cheats.
Apple hardly has clean hands.
Ever heard of Xerox?
Excel and Word cost money and always have. Word Perfect and Lotus 123 failed to compete.
Hardly the same thing as Netscape trying to compete with free. Microsoft did kill Netscape.
Really? Exactly what "technology" did Microsoft "steal" from Apple?
As far as I understand it, Microsoft decided that the GUI interface (which Apple had... ahem, appropriated from Xerox, was the way of the future. Kudos to both Steve Jobs and Bill Gates for their development of the GUI. Jobs was pissed off that he exposed his next product to Gates and Gates immediatly persued it as well. That said, it's a HELL of a long way from "stealing technology". Both men had the foresight to develop Xerox's technology. I get annoyed when the Apple fans repeat this canard. If you can show me the code that Microsoft copied from Apple to figure out how to do something, you would have a case. As it is they both persued the same idea. If anyone is an injured party here, it is Xerox.
Some call it cheating. You hear that a lot. But it's really only that MS had a better business model, delivering greater total value to its customers than any of its competitors.
Microsoft used its operating system to promote Word which killed off Word Perfect. Microsoft used its operating system to promote Excel which killed off Lotus 1,2,3.
Then download Open Office. Totally free with all the functionality you could want.
Microsoft used its operating system to promote Explorer which killed off Netscape.
Considering I'm viewing this page on my free, superior Mozilla Firefox 3 browser, I'm thinking that's not much of an issue either.
There are some genuine beefs with monopolistic practices, but this web browser thing is beyond ridiculous.
I dunno, I would call it a hell of a good marketing plan
Netscape - the company - killed Netscape - the product.
It did? Really?
I never knew Word came bundled with the operating system. And to think I paid good money to purchase Word - because my secretary hated Wordperfect.
MS didn't kill off Word Perfect... "Word Perfect for Windows" and Novell killed Word Perfect. Do you really remember Lotus 123? I remember having to install 3 different versions of Lotus on computers, just to allow spreadsheets with embedded macros to continue to work. Granted, Excel isn't much better, but MS really didn't kill Lotus, as much as IBM's purchase of the company hurt it. I know that it's fashionable to label Bill Gates as the Anti-Christ, and Microsoft as "The Great Satan," but try to get a grip. Yes, MS has (in the past, and often continues to do so today) used heavy handed (some will call them predatory) capitalistic tactics to wipe out competitors. And they, like any other company, don't like competition. But let's be realistic: The fall of these other companies wasn't completely Microsoft's doing.
People realized that they wanted integrated applications, where they didn't need to learn an entirely different user interface in order to start using a new application. And people wanted to be able to integrate information from different applications together, like being able to paste live data into their documents. That led to a number of integrated application packages from a lot of companies... For instance, Word Perfect had their package which included "Word Perfect," "Plan Perfect," "Data Perfect," and even "Word Perfect Office" which would eventually become "GroupWise," Novell's messaging system. Lotus had their own integrated system. And different word processors had their own niche markets. For instance, most serious scientific desktop publishers used Aldus Pagemaker on Sun workstations since they often needed a WYSIWYG interface, while those who didn't would often use WordStar. Word Perfect was at home in law offices, and there were a bunch of document management systems that grew up around it. And Microsoft Word (pre-windows) was a solid performer that had a pretty good reputation. Heck, even Informix had an integrated package, but for the life of me, I can't remember the name of it. We're talking back in the days of the Intel 80286 processor.
But Microsoft was the first to really push the idea of a fully integrated desktop user interface, that extended into the applications. There were others, like GEM, but they failed, and NOT because of Microsoft.
Microsoft stole Apple’s technology to develop Windows. Apple only responded in court too late and too little.
MS didn't "steal" technology from Apple (though they did from some other companies, like IBM and Stack Electronics), any more than Apple stole the technology of Xerox's SmallTalk environment from PARC. In both cases, they (Apple and Microsoft) "saw" a better user interface, and built upon it. You're referring to the "look & feel" law suits. But I'll tell you, while Windows "look & feel" was similar to that of Apple's OS, the original Mac and LISA OS looked identical to the Smalltalk interface used by Xerox at PARC. Not "similar," but identical. So by your standards, that would make Apple "more guilty" of "stealing" than Microsoft.
No question about it, Microsoft cheats
Take a chill pill, Dave.
Mark
“Microsoft used its operating system to promote Word which killed off Word Perfect”
Word Perfect was a great program.