[Lancaster] [Fwd: Re: Twitter]

[Martyn Welch]

Richard Robinson wrote:
> On Sun, Feb 22, 2009 at 12:46:25AM +0000, Martyn Welch wrote:
>> Would we have the internet playing such a large role in the world today 
>> without there having been such a dominant player in the computer market? 
> 
> Yes.
> 
> Until Microsoft (finally) heard the news, providers were coming up with
> 3rd-party software. Demon, in this country (I don't know the details of
> other countries) had been experiencing exponential growth for years by the
> time it was possible to access it with anything Microsoft provided.
> 

Really? Because my memory is that operating systems at the time didn't 
provide TCP/IP stacks and an after market addition was required. I can't 
remember seeing a floppy/CD posted through my door or picked up in a 
shop that provided software which supported anything other than Windows, 
though possibly the Apple Mac - definitely none of the smaller players.

It's not that Microsoft provided the TCP/IP stack, it was that it's 
dominant position made it financially and technically viable to give 
away a TCP/IP stack on a cheap medium that would work on the vast 
majority of PCs that people had in there homes.

> It was the connectivity that was available, people were selling it, lots of
> people wanted it.
> 

There are probably always enthusiastic early adopters, just like there 
were with Sony's Minidisc and Toshiba's HD-DVD. By 1996, I'd agree, lots 
of people wanted it, but it had already made it passed the early adopter 
stage by then - it probably made it passed that stage before there was a 
single consumer ISP in the UK.

>> Who knows, who knows if the internet would have even stuck and not 
>> fizzled out for the masses when some other new shiny idea came along. I 
>> do however believe it would be unwise to dismiss the role Microsoft 
>> played, however unwittingly they played it.
> 
> I think, the role they played was to drag their feet as long as possible and
> then try to make the best of a bad job by claiming it would never have
> happened without them. It's also possible that, if they hadn't eventually
> come up with support for it, OSs that did would have gained in market share.
> 
> The Internet _worked_, years before Microsoft payed it any attention at all.
> People wanted it. Microsoft have nothing whatsoever to do with that.
> 

Ah, but my point wasn't that Microsoft supported it. My point is that 
the largely homogeneous install base that Microsoft had created by 
trying to put a Microsoft powered computer on a desk in every home made 
it possible to provide the software required as part of a marketing 
dump. Floppy disks with the Microsoft compatible software were mass 
posted through doors, stuck on many magazines and freely available on 
little stands in shops. This would have been *much* harder to achieve 
had the home computer market been highly fragmented.

Martyn