Your opinions on Vista?

[x64Jimbo]

I won't ever use a TC-enabled OS on a machine connected to the net. Thus for me Vista loses the game before it even begins; I don't have to consider it in terms of the features, look and feel, system requirements, so on; it loses on a much more essential basis: basic rights, privacy and control over what my computer is doing.

Right you are. Treacherous Computing operating systems will never, EVER touch a single bit of my RAM.

i don't know what part of the world you come from, but you couldn't be more wrong about the situation in britain at that time.

I come from the USA. My dad was working for IBM at the time, and I can tell you that literally no one we knew had anything like that.
I will pose this question:
To me, it's obvious how Microsoft maintains its monopoly today. It twists people's arms into submission. However, monopolies don't just form out of nowhere. They had to have done something right to get the entire world behind them. What did they do? They developed a product that was easy to use and got a bunch of software developers to write for Windows. It's not rocket science, but it did take a lot of business sense and cooperation with other companies (which they admittedly DON'T do anymore) but that tactic was what brought them into the limelight.

[Footissimo]

no they weren't. that accolade goes to the zx81.

ZX80

I had one

[x64Jimbo]

Man, we got some hardcore fanatics in here. I try to say that MS did one good thing over 10 years ago, and everyone's like "Nuh-Uh! Atari Amiga Blah!"
Jeez.

[win_zik]

All well and good, but none of the companies you mentioned brought their product into the public eye. Know why? At that time, they didn't have business sense to back up their technological skills.

As ComplexNumber already noted, this is simply wrong for the C64, the Amiga, the Atari ST, certainly for Apple and don't forget the other guis for DOS like GEM that were commercially successful.

... but if they had not stepped up and delivered on a large scale, no one would have.

I don't see why that should be the case, given the examples I already mentioned. Also, I thought your original point was that they were inventive.

Apple's GUI was very confusing at the time, and still is to some extent. Who drags their disk into the trash, anyway? What the hell were they thinking? And why no right-click? Windows gained prolificity through catering to business people. Efficiency is the most important thing in the mind of a businessperson, and I can tell you that having to Ctrl+Click on something just to get its context menu would annoy the living crap out of me as a businessman. I would want to be able to do what I want without having all these silly "user friendly" features getting in the way. Apple's market testing obviously was not on a broad enough scale for them to see that they were designing their systems counter-intuitively.

I don't think Apple bashing really adds to this discussion and I'm pretty sure Apple's problem wasn't lack of userfriendlyness, but the fact that they couldn't compete with an open platform, like the PC.

I'm not saying that MS had the first GUI. I'm saying MS was the first one to make the Personal Computer a reality.

I thought you were saying they were inventive and I fail to see how you can still hold this position, given all the evidence to the contrary.
As to MS making the PC a reality, I think IBM and especially those who reengineered the BIOS and made the PC an open platform deserve the credit for this.

[win_zik]

Man, we got some hardcore fanatics in here. I try to say that MS did one good thing over 10 years ago, and everyone's like "Nuh-Uh! Atari Amiga Blah!"
Jeez.

I'm sorry, but I really take exception to being called a fanatic just because I dare to disagree your opinion that Windows 3.1 was inventive and then even have the nerve to back my disagreement up with facts.

[x64Jimbo]

Ok, so you're telling me that ALL the other GUIs at the time were more innovative? They were ALL better implemented than Windows 3.1? I will ask my question again:
How come they're not leading the market now? If they were all better, why did MS win? They may have had a huge marketing machine, but it could not have beat out all those competing products if they were truly superior.

I'm sorry, but I really take exception to being called a fanatic just because I dare to disagree your opinion that Windows 3.1 was inventive and then even have the nerve to back my disagreement up with facts.

Woah, hey. No need to get snarky.

[ComplexNumber]

I come from the USA. My dad was working for IBM at the time, and I can tell you that literally no one we knew had anything like that.

thats not surprising at all. no offence, but america is quite backward in many respects compared to places like europe. just look at the state of the phone networks even now. america, now, is at the same stage that europe was at about 6 years ago. the situation is the same with computers.
i can tell you for a fact that personal computers were significantly more ubiquitous in britain and other parts of europe than america even then. virtually EVERYONE had one, sometime 2. and microsoft was nowehre to be seen at that time.
guess what the best selling computer of all time is? the commodore 64 in the early to mid 1980's. also, don't forget the impact that the commodore pet had on personal computing. sadly, the bitter rivalry between amiga/commodore and atari left them both worse off.

What did they do?

they used unscrupulous tactics - stealing others ideas, getting MS bundled in with every PC, and exceptionally good marketing. windows, itself, was always a crap OS, though. they also used some smart dealing. for example, IBM(by far the leader in manufacturing PC's at that time) would have been much better off signing a deal with microsoft that meant that the windows OS could only be licenced on ibm machines. however, i think anticompetitive laws at the time prevented them, but not too sure. that meant that MS were free to put windows on ibm, HP, and all the rest. remember that IBM's OS/2 was significantly better than windows.
another smart move by MS was buying DOS.

[x64Jimbo]

america is quite backward in many respects compared to places like europe.

No argument there. I don't like the way this country handles technology.
So are you really saying that MS has NEVER innovated? That's really a stretch if you ask me, but everyone knows that proving a negative is like pushing water uphill with a rake, so I guess it's pretty moot.

[win_zik]

Ok, so you're telling me that ALL the other GUIs at the time were more innovative? They were ALL better implemented than Windows 3.1?

No, that's not what I said at all.
I simply pointed out that win 3.1 was nothing new and innovative. There were other guis around at the same time or even had been around for some time. I even gave you examples of the guis I refered to. I really don't know why you make such a big deal about it.

I will ask my question again:
How come they're not leading the market now? If they were all better, why did MS win? They may have had a huge marketing machine, but it could not have beat out all those competing products if they were truly superior.

Look at OS/2. MS certainly can beat products that are clearly better.
However, I can only repeat it, I did not claim they were all superior, all I did claim was that win 3.1 wasn't innovative and I think I've established this fact pretty solidly by know.

Woah, hey. No need to get snarky.

Whoy, hey, your the one who called me and others a fanatic.

Anyway, as this is a thread about Vista, this will be my last post about this subject.

Edit: And here I am, just one minute later breaking my promise... ;-D

So are you really saying that MS has NEVER innovated?

That may be too much, but I think one can argue that MS' strengths never lay in innovation, but in other things.

[ComplexNumber]

So are you really saying that MS has NEVER innovated?

they haven't innovated. they couldn't innovate themselves out of a paper bag. they are just masters at marketing, and are experts at creating the image that they are the first to do Feature A or Feature B. they're pretty much like sony in that respect.