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I am just celebrating 30 years of working with computers, most
of time as a programmer.
I worked on HP Time Sharing System in 1975-79, DEC's RSX-11M up
to 1985, then APPLEDOS, CP/M up to 1997, MS-DOS and UNIX up to
1996 and I almost exclusively use Windows since then.
I programmed in Basic, Fortran, Assembler, Pascal, C, xBase and
the like, and now I mostly use Visual Basic.NET
I was watching while Microsoft was grabbing the market, after
consolidating and bundling Office components into one product
(and, what is more important, one package to install).
I was delighted when Windows reached a level, between versions
3.1 and 3.11 for Networks, where programs were not coming any
more with drivers for particular graphics card, printer and/or
network adapter, and where national fonts, printing and
networking started to work flawlessly, while basic use being
easy enough to be mastered by ordinary people
I was watching while everyday hardware stopped coming with
drivers for operating systems other than Windows (it was hard
for me being a PC-UNIX
fan back then).
I also spent several years watching many vendors promising
revolutionary new systems around RISC processors, all in vain -
if my memories are still reliable, Microsoft had the first
non-AIX operating system for PowerPC, it also had the first fully
POSIX compliant operating system ever.
I saw Novell buying the UNIX from Bell Labs, trying to make it a
Netware-related client-side operating system (was not this
Novell act far more preposterous than anything Microsoft has
ever done?).
While selling one of the rapid application development tools (JAM,
if anybody remembers) I
witnessed the demise of several database systems, compilers and
other development components while Microsoft was grabbing more
and more of the market at the same time.
And why all of this happened? It was easier and cheaper for
users and gave them more integrated components which all worked
more intuitively. Users enjoyed that very much and during that years invested
(and are still further investing) tremendous amount of time and
money in learning how to use
(Microsoft's and others') tools.
Prophets of other kingdoms usually kindly ignore this users'
invested time and achieved skills (and that of support
people, too) when they profess switching to other platforms and
tools because it is slightly cheaper and/or slightly more
powerful.
The history of computing can be simplified into this few sentences:
Each of this switches happened because of the great advantage
they gave to users over the previous paradigm, not the minor
one. And for each switch users had to abandon most of their
existing skills and acquire new ones. Alas, there are several
orders of magnitude more users now than back in the era of
mainframes so Microsoft replacement will require much, much
more effort.
Regarding the
Intel monopoly, it will be replaced when somebody offers better and/or
cheaper hardware.
However, this switch would be far easier and is far more
probable as, unlike with Microsoft, there is almost none
investment of user knowledge and skills in their use of Intel
products (compared to, for example, AMD hardware).
Microsoft, in the other hand, will be replaced on appearance of something that
will satisfy users' needs in so much better and/or cheaper
way which will make users massively consider abandoning of
many or most of their computer skills and existing tools an
appealing goal.
That skills and tools of existing users to be abandoned and
still-ruling two-CDs-to-install concept is what makes
Microsoft such a strong market player (for most users, I mean)
- other things
are for fans only or for special purposes.
That is what makes bundling of more and more functionality
into Windows and Office good for users, not bad, however
loudly opponents may cry.
And that is what will establish another strong market monopoly
again, after Microsoft is replaced. Monopoly is the nature
of this market, I guess, because of users knowledge and
skills investment necessary for massive adoption of
such complicated technologies.
And why do I write this text? As a reply to often put question if Microsoft monopoly is good or bad and whether it should be dismantled into several companies or if Windows PCs should be replaced by so called 'network terminals', 'thin clients' etc. It should be said that I do not work for Microsoft (nor had I), Microsoft does not pay me for this and I do not expect anything at all from Microsoft, directly or indirectly. I do not particularly like Microsoft, I just find using its products convenient for me. What I do like is to dive occasionally, watch underwater world and hunt octopuses. You might find some useful thoughts in this text. If not, spare me of your hate mail - I would not answer it anyway. Gjuro Kladaric, Zagreb, Croatia |
