Gates turned the tables???

Remember, OS was originally made for computers... Bill Gates had said without an OS your computer is a metal box... OS was made Computers...

But now after Vista launched...

Now COMPUTERS are being made specially for the OS called Vista.

Thats the power of Microsoft...Thats the power of Bill Gates.


This is as discussion thread for enthusiasts....

My question: Is this monopoly justified?

I mean using their monopoly to control the Computer companies....is it justified???

 

Its will be the monopoly when court will decide so.

Joe User saying "its a monopoly" until he blue in the face will not make it so.

 

Weren't computers being made specifically for XP, 2000, 98, and OS/X? Hell, the Sun box in my office was made specifically for Solaris! ew.

 

umm bill gates didnt force you to use windows. Go ahead and get linux or os x but then you get no games. windows are used b/c their the best for all around use. So you need great hardware to run the best os out there , big deal? you can get other os'es so its not really a monopoly...

os x and linux users might call their os'es the best but who has DX10? That means if you want newest games, you get vista...The point of an os is to be versatile so you can use it for whatever you want. so far only windows have done this.

For those of you yelling "but omfg os x can play wow !"... yeah that and a couple of other games. I dont want my game choices to be limited by the os im using. Until im an apple fan boy who is ready to kiss steve jobs ass im not falling for an inferior os.

 

Yup ....same reason why i havent used OS X..... i want maximum versatility...

But i was talking about changing your entire computer specs just for an OS...

Most of the XP comps wont run Vista ...& all this is because of business culture.

Actually, this is American business culture...which doesnt think 20 years ahead... ( www.geert-hofstede.com)


Japanese business culture focusses more on long-term....e.g Sony


Joe user knows more than court btw....
&
Court can be influenced large corps. ...if u dont believe me then read about napster.

 

I hate Microsoft's domination of the PC market. What good is it to come out with XP, then wait 2 years for a decent service pack. Then release Vista, 2 more years for a decent service pack.

This monopolistic culture impedes progress. If we really wanted to see progress we would have 2 or 3 Microsoft's competing to deliver better products.

Imagine the console market with only 360. We'd see no blu-ray and no innovation with the Wii. If there was no AMD, who knows when we would have seen multi-cored processors. Intel could have kept pumping the GHz wars. So who knows what we're missing in the PC market, all we can do is wait for Microsoft to find a way to be profitable and hope we like it what they deliver.

 

I love Microsoft, Gates in a Business Genius. People say they hate him but they still use Windows. Makes me laugh.

Ok so he has the monopoly, but thats business. People just like someone to hate.

 

Oh really?
Then to declare you a criminal, all I will need is to gather enough supporters?

 

Name one. I know of no machines limited to running Vista, or even built specially for Vista. The only machines I know of that are locked to a particular OS are Macs.

What control is there when they are free to install Linux on their machines and some actually even offer it preinstalled?

You are jousting at non existant windmills here. With this thread and your "Microsoft stealing data" thread your bias is clearly showing.

Gary

 

And please tell me what OS the fine folks at Sony install on their machines? Excuse me but now you are talking out of both sides of your mouth.

Gary

 

Microsoft IS a monopoly, and the courts have already said so. This is not an illegal thing to be, and as long as a company does not use it's position to prevent other competition, there is nothing wrong with it. However, Microsoft has time and again used it's position illegally, but it's only computer people who understand what they are doing, so it continues unchecked.

Europe is finally trying to do something about it, but the US States who were suing MS for this lost their nerve and didn't follow through.

The reason we hate MS is not because it is a monopoly, but because they are mediocre at best at what they do. From a technical standpoint, they have no reason to be the dominant force in the market, and that only comes from their business ability. If MS had a technically sound product, we would not dislike them (that's why everyone likes google).

 

Don't we have that right now? We have Apple, Red Hat, Unbutu etc. etc.

But what does that REALLY get us? Lets turn the clock back a few years to pre Windows. There were several operating systems on the market. As a developer you had to bet on which would be the "winning horse" because it cost a LOT of money to create an application for DOS, SCO-Unix, CPM, etc. Pick the wrong horse and you could loose a very significant share of your potential user market.

And as a user that situation was even worse. You had to try to pick an OS that you hoped would have folks writing for it the kinds of programs you needed. And then there were all those pesky printer issues. Every application running on every OS had to have it's own printer drivers because there were no standards. Every printer came with a disk with hundreds of drivers for the various applications folks might want to run. The one for Visicalc under DOS was different for the one for Visicalc under CPM and they were both different than the ones for Wordstar.

Yes, yes please lets bring back a proliferation of vendors it was soooooo much better that way.

I am NOT suggesting Microsoft should be a absolute monopoly, but what I am saying as we as users and developers have certainly benefited from the commoditization of the OS over the years. And if you think all of this could have been fixed by simply establishing something like a printer driver standard to fix the one specific issue I mentioned above, think again. If you have ever dealt with any standards setting (I have) you know how quickly they become battles of who's proprietary way is best and the self interests of the companies involved, namely $$$$, quickly grind them to a halt or a least common denominator mentality. Case in point the polarization in the various Linux flavors and their "balkanization" of GUI standards.

Gary

 

I just like more of a choice and less restrictions etc: etc: But then nobody would make money. LOL

 

It's a developing world. Why do you want to go backwards? Vista is the future.

 

Who cares wheither you love them or hate them. You have no much alternative anyway.

 

Not that they are necessarily locked to Vista, but the HP Pavilion series is a pain in the butt to get XP running correctly on a machine that came with Vista.
http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=165319

Not complaining whatsoever. Just pointing out that although it is possible, it is a huge pain, and just as well, HP doesn't recommend it, nor will they supply you with an XP CD anymore.

 

Benefited, without a doubt. Did you read the REST of what I wrote? Did you use a microcomputer prior to Win3.1? If not, you probably don't understand the perspective I was trying to convey. Prior to Win3.1 and then the MAC OS there was such a HUGE mish-mash of operating systems, applications, printer drivers, modem drivers etc. that it was virtually impossible for the average joe or jane to buy, let alone use, a computer. The plethora of options and incompatabilities made it a mine field that only computer geeks dared to tread into. The commoditization of the OS did make it much easier for your grandmother and my 75 year old father to own and USE a computer.

Gary

 

MS rules. Bill Gates for Prez!

 

The definition of a monopoly, as defined in the American Heritage Dictionary, is as follows:


Exclusive control by one group of the means of producing or selling a commodity or service: "Monopoly frequently ... arises from government support or from collusive agreements among individuals" (Milton Friedman).
Law A right granted by a government giving exclusive control over a specified commercial activity to a single party.

A company or group having exclusive control over a commercial activity.
A commodity or service so controlled.
Exclusive possession or control: arrogantly claims to have a monopoly on the truth.
Something that is exclusively possessed or controlled: showed that scientific achievement is not a male monopoly.

Exclusive possession or control: arrogantly claims to have a monopoly on the truth.
Something that is exclusively possessed or controlled: showed that scientific achievement is not a male monopoly.


Therfore, as Microsoft does not control the computing market in terms of OS they do NOT have a monopoly. Consumers still have the option to choose the various OS, such as Mac, Linux, etc. Just because the majority of consumers prefer to use Windows over Mac OS, does not give Microsoft a monopoly.

 

I think we are forgetting what MS does, it builds OS's. As in Operating Systems, it's not a media player or internet browser. It's easy to turn out a better piece of software, when that single piece of software is all your worried about.

Microsoft knows that there are better alternatives out there for things like that. They are not interested in building the supreme internet browser, they are concerned with building the OS that browser is running on. At least you can install pretty much everything on a MS based system. Try installing even 50% of the software on the market onto an OSX system and see what happens.

I am so sick of the MS/Vista bashing going on. I don't like using linux, so you know what I do? I use Vista. You don't see me on here bashing it.

 

Baserk,

Ah Geos! I remember that! I'd forgotten about it though, thanks for jogging my brain cells there. Wasn't that available on several platform OS?

I am not saying that Microsoft single handedly pulled us out of the dark ages. Geos was a great stab at moving us out of the mine field I mentioned. But your comment makes it sound as if there wasn't a "dark age". I am saying the commoditization of the OS is what pulled us out of that morass, not Microsoft per se. That was why I made a point of including the MAC OS in my comments. I did NOT want to imply that it was Microsoft that was the hero.

Gary

P.S. for those interested in a bit of PC history here are two links:

The GEOS 16 bit (or GEOWorks) OS
and
The original 8 bit version.

Thanks again to Baserk for a walk down memory lane!

 

its funny how you guys blame microsoft and windows for being the monopoly. lets assume for a mere second that it is after all a monopoly ( which i think is a load of bs). Lets see HOW they become a monopoly shalle we? was it because gates won a lottery? no, it was because they offered a superior product. thats it. its that simple.

how about this. Lets say apple introduced some kind of an innovation on the os X that would allow games and other applications to run properly just like on windows. This would add a whole lot of software people could run on the macs right? wouldnt that remove any kind of incentive for people who dislike MS or vista not to buy a mac anymore? too bad steve jobs is too busy inventing lousy apps like time machine and other crap instead of focusing on whats really important.

like is said, what it comes down to is versatility. people want compatability. I want to be able to download anything off the internet or pop in any cd and play the dvd/music/etc... I dont want apple's "superior" os that only runs a select few pieces of software they chose.

so then here is the point in the nutshell: assuming that MS is a monopoly, the only reason it has reached this status is through capitalism marketplace. It offered versatile products that the public found attractive. Games and apps or time machine? Vista it is.

Some of you guys must be mentally demented for blaming microsoft for its success. Realizing that linux is free, Why dont you get pissed at the only competitor who has the funds to make a difference and so far has not done a good job making their OS versatile? - apple ?

 

Computers have been designed specially for Microsoft operating systems ever since Compaq made the first IBM PC clone running MS-DOS. Nothing new.

 

Ha... that's funny. It's almost like there isn't another graphics sublayer standard. Geez... what's that called... OpenGL? Oh yeah, aren't games coded in that too? Yeah, especially games like UT, Doom, and Quake.

Microsoft became a monopoly not because they offered the best product. It was because they offered a generic product that could be run on a generic platform standard, i.e., the IBM x86 PC. Mac OS could only run on a Macintosh, and UNIX (before Linux) could only run on a UNIX machine, which was not x86 based. Microsoft made a great decision to pick the platform that had the open standard and develop for it. It worked out for them. They had aggressive marketing and other proprietary applications (like Office and IE) that helped them as well.

But that was the past, when standards were needed. Now we have standards in hardware (thanks in large part to Microsoft) and software. And there's the problem. I don't care if Microsoft continues to be the dominant party in the OS world, or if they continue creating Windows. What I do care is that they follow open standards. Use an open document format so that I can use OpenOffice rather than Microsoft Office. Use standard web protocols and get rid of ActiveX so I can visit every site I want to on the Internet. Use a standard graphics API like OpenGL so that games can run cross platform. When you use an open standard, everyone can work together further that standard, and you can spend ore time working on the features that sell your operating system rather than trying to keep your customers locked in to your operating system (which is the new Microsoft approach... thank you Steve Ballmer).

And by the way, there are plenty of applications that don't run on Windows available. Go try to download Evolution internet browser. Or the KOffice office suite. Or the Rythmbox music manager. Or AmaroK. Just because Windows has the most software, doesn't mean it has all the software, and doesn't mean it has the best software.

 

im glad you found my post entertaining. I know about Microsoft and those cases, many companies overstep boundaries in an effort to maximize profits and attempt to eliminate competition. While it is not legal, Microsoft would be nothing if people did not find its OS the most attractive and versatile. Thats the main point i was trying to make, you chose to focus on irrelavant details.

i have got no clue what you are talking about when you say im talking about morals and the capitalist marketplace. What?? i never even mentioned morals. I merely said that M$ is on top of the food chain because they have the best OS out there. If you think MS is more successful solely because it used unethical business pratices, then you are the comedian here. I dont want to put words in your mouth and im not sure you are saying that, just seemed implied.

I liked the witty reference to Enron, and the Grand Tour of Hilarious Comments Visits Europe. A poorly executed attempt to disguise the fact that your argument is generally speaking irrelevant, and holds no value didnt impress me.

You basically argue that MS acted like a monopoly and has cases pending (all which i knew before hand). Yeah so ? That still doesnt avert the fact that the reason for MS success was offering a superior product. Thats what my main argument about it was.

If it was the other way around and apple had used such pratices MS would still be on the top because os X is inferior. It simply can not offer the versatility that windows can. I dont want to get redundant you get what i was trying to say.

The customers and the market chooses what goods they purchase. Customers always look for the best deals and most bang for their buck (you dont even have to look far just look on this forum about people trying to get the best deals). Those are basic economic concepts anyone can grasp. well almost anyone apparently. If there are lets say 5 products offered by different companies (A, B, C, D, E), the market will choose one that will offer most features at a reasonable price. if product A is the best, then the company who is selling it will naturally recieve the most profits. Even if the other companies are cheating by using unorthodox business practices, most customers will still opt for the better product, thus making Company that Sells A the strongest.
I feel these concepts are very basic but it seems not everyone can understand it here, and choose to blame M$ success for monopolistic practices. While im not saying they had no effect, it certainly wasnt significant enough so as to cause one company rise above the other.

 

The other thing people fail to realize is that with Windows, when you first boot up a computer you have just bought it runs. And it runs utilizing all the features of the computer which is really quite impressive considering how many different components etc are used between manufacturers. Thats the main reason I use Vista. It isn't because I prefer MS or because they have some sort of semi-fictional "monopoly" on OSes but because when I turned my computer on it worked. I could access the internet via wireless, listen to music and browse the web which is something that I could not with any of the Linux distributions I experimented with soon after getting my laptop.

I don't want to have to spend my time fiddling around with code to stop a horrible high pitched noise whenever I listen to music and I'm sure a lot of other people don't as well. Those are the people who will generally use Windows. The only reason that there is no major alternative to Windows is because there is no other OS that offers such out the box functionality (although Ubuntu is getting there) on such a wide variation of platforms.

I'm pretty certain that if Apple were to open up Mac OS X for other OEMs (which they won't because they love all those pretty pennies and the exclusive control that comes with a closed platform) then we would see a balancing in market share. However, insular Apple choose not to which is one of the reasons Windows is so prevalent and appears to some to be a monopoly. Theres also the question of whether Apple would even be able to support the differences between machines. There is competition. Just one that isn't very versatile and one that requires a lot of user input. That is not what most people are looking for.

 

I'm waiting for something better to come out, but no one can or will step up to the plate. Mac and Linux continue to grow marketshare, don't they? No one forced me to use Vista or XP, but I did it probably for the same reason everyone else in world that does does. So what's the point?

 

A search engine and online maps is hardly a whole operating system and the problems that come with the later.

 

^^you just took that quote waaaayyyy out of context.

 

It had to be done though really! XD

 

very well put, i agree

 

"I mean using their monopoly to control the Computer companies....is it justified???"

Totally. The more the hardware and software intermesh, the better the overall performance will be.

 

Replace the word 'Apple' there with 'Microsoft' and your comment suddenly becomes relevant. And I don't think anyone is blaming MS for success, they blame it because it stifles interoperability and innovation.

I thought it was because their OS came preinstalled on 85% of computers sold.

So Macs don't work when you first buy them? You have to take it to a tech whiz and say 'fix my computer please', do you? I haven't had a single computer that didn't work out of the box. That's both Windows and Macs.

You suppose those Ubuntu Dells don't work, do you?

What you have to remember though, is Microsoft are a software company, Apple are a hardware company. They don't make their profits through selling boxes of Leopard. They make it through selling computers, just like Dell, HP, etc.

But those search engines and maps work better than the MS alternative. People like Google because their stuff works, works well and works everywhere.

Unfortunately, recent history has shown performance to be decreasing. The only space we've seen 'better' hardware and software interoperability is TPM and DRM, both technologies which can be detrimental to the comsumer. What the computer worls needs is greater separation between hardware and software.

 

When people buy a MacBook Pro, They don't say "Hey look at the hardware" They say "OSX is awesome, it works great, and because it's not windows based it's less prone to viruses"

The "Hardware" in an Mac is damn near the same thing as any other computer.
It's the proprietary software people are buying.

Another vote for "It's Steve Jobbs fault that windows has the majority of the market share." NOT BILL GATES

 

My "old" AMD 3700 seems to run vista like a champ. Aero, office, and everything else runs great on it.

I think you fail to realize hardware from four years ago will run Vista just run. All Vista needs over XP is more RAM, not more CPU. CPUs have far outpaced an average computer user's needs a long time ago.

 

Look, Steve Jobs brought GUI into the world... Xerox board of directors had rejected it when Xerox R&D dept. did a presentation in NY.

Bill Gates just discovered that this guy Steve jobs is doin some cool things..he tricked him into revealing it all...

Later Bill becomes the worlds richest...& has huge market share..

Now i dont sit at the comp like avg joe & pour out BS.

I suggest two books u all should read & one docu drama u shud see..



Books: 'iCon' by Jeffrey Young
'The Plot To Get Bill Gates' by Gary Rivlin

Movie: Pirates of the silicon valley (which has some truth although little drama also)


So i make this statement after referring to all this material stated above.


Bill Gates is a great businessman...but he is not that creative.


the war is always between creativity vs commercial ....

But what i am saying is that OSX would have been compatible if they had the market share...Bill didnt let them have market share & hence we live with Windows... Windows is really stable but not the best thing!!!

 

Not all computers older than 3 yrs are Vista compatible ...average computer is not vista compatible...it required good graphic card, good processor above 1.6 GHz, & RAM above 1.5 GB..

 

one more question i have for u all...
Why DX10 cannot run on XP? are the programmers so dumb? is it not possible technically to run dx10 on XP? or is it MS not allowing it?

I also heard that MS is planning to retire XP by mid 2008... i will post that article shortly after going through news archives.

 

1. What Bill Gates did years ago, doesn't affect what Jobbs decides to do now. He could still allow HP, Dell, etc.. to configure their computers with OSX which is the main selling point of a Mac.

2. Books can be written with a slant one way or the other. They can also lie. I prefer to do my own research and get both sides of the story, then make my opinion.

 

No, computers are being made for software. Software is being made for both Windows, and Mac. It so happens Windows can host software that uses more resources.

So in the end, developers are the ones pushing for new hardware. A clear example is EA, with the release of Crysis they made clear that current hardware is weak.

 

Microsoft is becoming less and less of a monopoly every day.. Macs are gaining market share, and so is linux. Then again, we have a new monopoly to worry about. Apple. The Mac + iPod + iTunes spells big trouble if you ask me.

 

Hai, I have little doubt Apple would be just as bad (if not worse) than MS if the tables were turned.

 

Lysander, when I was speaking of the computer boot-up I was referring to Linux, not an Apple platform since they are mentioned later. I would sincerely hope that those Ubuntu based Dells work and I'm sure that Ubuntu's compatibility is increasing - hence my comment that Ubuntu is getting there - but the sort of near universal compatibility that Windows has cannot, at the moment, be matched on a Linux platform.

Even though some may see Apple and Microsoft as being in two different businesses and some may not, the original issue was regarding a supposed "monopoly". Surely a monopoly cannot exist since there is the offering of Mac OS? Its not any of Microsoft's doing that Mac OS remains fixed to one type of hardware currently.

You are very right about some of Google's software (things like maps) and I'm sure that if the privacy issues can be worked out, then Android will also be an excellent mobile OS. Competition is a good thing after all.

 

Plain and simple- my 1 year old mac now sits in the closet. The only added software on it?? Office. Why? Because it simply doesnt support alot of programs. I dont "love" Vista, but I use it for its versatilty. And I strongly believe why it's so popular among OS's.
I dont think I will ever return to Apple. If they ever became more "out there" with software I may consider.

 

One sector of Microsoft that WILL fail is their attempt to promote and sell the MP3 player Zune......

Apple= leading developers of mp3's
Microsoft = leading developers in operating systems

If the above points were reversed they would fail miserably.

When someone mentions to me "Apple" I think of my ipod.
When someone mentions "Microsoft"- bang.. I think of windows.

It's the norm- get used to it.

 

Depends... Vista has its share of compatibility issues. But those don't count?
These days, Linux pretty much works out of the box too.

Yes, it can. I invite you to look up what a monopoly actually is.
Or, if you prefer the less technical approach, point me to a counterexample. Show me the legal and reliable alternative I have, for running all my existing applications.

That's the monopoly they have. Yes, you can buy other computers with other software, but that's not competition. It'd be competition if I had a choice. If I could run my Windows software on non-Windows computers (and the other way around, of course)

It'd be competition if I could say "Here's the software I need to run. Now do I choose OS A, B or C for it?"

It's not competition if I have to ditch everything I own and start over, in order to try a competitor's product.

Or a real-world example. I don't need to drive on special roads depending on what car I need, do I? Would there be competition if one road network was reserved for Ford only? If I happen to live on one of the streets covered by that network, how much choice would I have?

Railroads compete in the same way. They ensure that the tracks are standardized so companies all over the world can compete in building and running trains *on the same tracks*. Would there be competition if each company had to build their own tracks from scratch?

Don't you think it'd hurt competition if there wasn't a standard socket for light bulbs? If I had to buy light bulbs from the same company that made the lamp I wanted to put it in?

That's the exact situation we have with operating systems. I'm *forced* to buy Microsoft's operating system in order to run my non-Microsoft software.

That's the sole thing that ensures Microsoft's continued monopoly. (It's what makes it a monopoly in the first place too)
Switching away from Microsoft forces you to also switch away from all the software you own and use. Sometimes you can find similar software on other platforms, sometimes you can't.

The day we get a Windows-compatible non-MS operating system, that's the day Microsoft stops being a monopoly.

 

Uh yeah... And when someone mentions Nokia, you think of rubber boots, right?
When someone mentions Nintendo, you think of hand-made playing cards?

 

LOL there's no standard, you got screw in, pop in and now you can get special clip ones

Sorry I had to.....

 

That's funny, I have been using Vista for almost three months now and I haven't had a single compatibility issue with it.

I love people that can't drop that one. Get over the RC1 headaches already!! Yeah, Vista had some problems when first released. Now it is a pretty sharp OS.

 

awesome thread xD i read through this one.

i agree that apple wasnt smart enough to open up their software to compatibility. yeah mac does work out of the box but thats as far as it goes, whatever comes out of the box is basically what you get.
oh look it has a gt8600 but i cant do sh"" with it unless i install xp or vista to maximize the use.
Vista and XP work out of the box +add games here +do business there if u didnt like it. reinstall or use something else


Vista isnt just an OS, its a gaming platform too, that brought great games to us like Half Life, Bio Shock, command and conquer.

Mac is just for business and multimedia, thats the most fun u can get from a mac. (yeah i know there are some games that will work on it but really is it enough?)

+bill gates was a dam smart and crude businessman. everyone should learn something from him. Buying out dos and doing something similar to MacOS wayyyy back 1980s. we had a business ethics paper on it ^^

+ i agree that because everyone uses it doesnt mean its a monopoly.
if anything its apple (close ended platform = inside the box thinking) and linux at fault. (free programming only goes so far)