[Don Joe]

"It could just as easily have been OS/2 that ran on all those PCs."

You're kidding, right?

OS/2 was there first, but it just didn't happen, did it. OBTW, Microsoft wrote OS/2 too, FWIW.

IBM was fixated on their proprietary PS/2 iron, and they saw OS/2 as being the other side of the same coin.

Between IBM's failure to market it, and its inherent unfriendliness compared to Windows (and I say that as an OS/2 early adopter, going back to the 16 bit version with the infamous "DOS box" that dopeslapped a 286 into multitasking a single real mode session), it was doomed.

To an extent, the generic x86 hardware and Windows was a chicken/egg situation, but by the same token, if not for Windows, people simply wouldn't have bought "standard" computers in the numbers that were ultimately responsible for the current dirt cheap prices.

If Windows disappeared tonight, it would be the death of the entire industry, and that's not because it's some imaginary "monopoly". It's because there's simply nothing else in its class, period. The *nixers carved out their niche, and it's theirs, and theirs alone. NWIH is Joe Consumer gonna go down that road even if you jam a pitchfork into his butt. Same thing with Be, and any other fringe OS. These things don't languish because MS prevents them from competing. They languish because people don't want them.

[steve-b]

IBM was fixated on their proprietary PS/2 iron, and they saw OS/2 as being the other side of the same coin.

"OS/2 for PS/2 -- Half an operating system for half a computer"

[Harrison Bergeron]

"If Windows disappeared tonight, it would be the death of the entire industry, "

If you work for Microsoft, I'll call that hubris. If you don't, I'll just call it historical ignorance.

[rdb3]

If Windows disappeared tonight, it would be the death of the entire industry, and that's not because it's some imaginary "monopoly". It's because there's simply nothing else in its class, period.

That's an atrocious insult to all IT professionals (like myself) the world over.There's nothing wrong with having a preference for Microsoft's products (hence my disagreement over Microsoft with Dominic Harr), but it's an entirely different ballgame when you start speaking like you are on Microsoft's payroll.

I'd bet a penny to a $20 dollar bill that if (which won't happen) Microsoft went away overnight, the industry will see innovation like it has never seen before. That huge market gap must be filled, and there are more than enough savvry tech-people around the world to ensure that it will be filled. Again, the free market will absolutely demand that it be filled.

Period.