[SC.LUG] Bill Gates to be Knighted?

[Ian Molton]

On Mon, 26 Jan 2004 20:46:09 -0000
"Rick [Kitty5]" <rick at kitty5.com> wrote:

> > Acorn had a FAR better desktop but couldnt get any market share
> > because even by then W$ and DO$ were so firmly entrenched in the
> > business market NO-one could get a look in (except in the tiny niches
> > of publishing and music which M$ didnt care about back then)
> 
> The Acorn desktop looked retro even in 95!

A matter of oppinion - I still think it looks professional now (especially the new versions) and it was more themeable than 95 even in 1990, so you could make it look like whatever you liked.

> (Aside from the AA fonts)

That still knock the spots of W$.

> That and you needed a _very_ expensive Acorn to run it on!

When the Archimedes was announced it was *WAY* cheaper than its equivalent in the X86 market (in fact was also far faster) It was *after* this that X86 crept into the home because 'its what we use at work'.

Back then most people didnt own computers.

> > Apple had a superior desktop at that point also.
> 
> They have always had a superior desktop, but again running on expensive
> propriety hardware. Exactly the same as is it now.

Early apples were, like the acorns, no more expensive than their PC equivalents.

> > The computer revolution, in short, was getting on just FINE before M$
> > crippled it.
> 
> Win95 running on cheap x86 hardware is what kick started the entire consumer
> PC market and put MS in the position they are today.

Their monopoly initially drove the price of non-X86 hardware *UP* faster than it reduced X86 prices (this was BEFORE the explosion in the last 5 years)

> They made the PC
> popular and in doing so standardised the desktop computing environment.

Standardised my arse. I STILL have to help people convert word docs between version x, y, z because word cant cope with itself.

> We now live with the luxury of being able to buy our gear off the shelf from
> a huge variety of manufacturers at very competitive prices.

Would have happened anyway.

> Would that have been the case if Apple or Acorn had come out on top?

Of course it would. It almost did with Apple years ago (but the market was very hostile and so it stopped) and its happening now with acorn hardware.

> Thank your lucky stars MS was never a hardware company!

Why? They are *better* at hardware by far than software.

> If it wasn't them it would be
> another corporation dominating the market doing exactly the same things.

So Im supposed to like M$ because they 'did it first' ?

> Do you think even for a second that if IBM had come out on top with OS/2
> they would be backing Linux now?

Perhaps. who knows. Theres no way one OS can hold the whole market anyway.

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