[opendtv] Re: I'm starting to feel sorry for, and worry about, Apple

  • From: Craig Birkmaier <craig@xxxxxxxxx>
  • To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Thu, 5 Aug 2010 08:35:25 -0400

At 3:25 PM -0500 8/4/10, Manfredi, Albert E wrote:
Obviously Craig, as in almost all of our other disagreements, I do not agree with you, because I am convinced that you are confusing cause and effect.
The Microsoft dominance only happened as a result of the PC dominance, i.e., after the fact. 

Yes, we disagree!
Technically, Microsoft was the "junior partner" when IBM launched the PC business. I agree that the ability for many companies to build PC hardware DID influence the uptake of PCs, especially at companies that prefer having multiple sources from which they can purchase.
But the reality is that neither IBM nor Microsoft opened the platform to competitors. It was the design of the PC around the core BIOS, and the ability to reverse engineer the IBM BIOS chips that allowed the platform to become an "open standard."
But it did not take long for Intel and Microsoft to dominate the PC landscape. There's a good reason that the term Wintel came to represent the monopolistic practices that allowed MS and Intel to dictate and control the evolution of the PC in the '90s.
If you want to see a fair discussion of this check the Wikipedia article on Wintel, which begins with the history of the PC market from its inception in the '80s. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wintel
And just to show you that my personal preferences are consistent, I was very much against the corporate and even government policy, back in the mid 1990s, to switch over to Microsoft Office. Exactly because it was creating this closed shop environment. 

Thank You Bert!
The truth is that Apple has been no more closed than any other manufacturer of personal computers. The reality is that they chose to have a degree of control over their platform through vertical integration, while the PC clone industry allowed Intel and Microsoft to siphon off the ,lions share of profits from PCs. As a result there was a rush to the bottom, as manufacturers battled to make cheap PCs with razor thin profit margins; the ultimate expression of this is "the Netbook," where alternatives to WinTel have been proliferating in an attempt to make a small profit on commodity hardware.
What you seem to miss are some simple facts. Even in the 1980s, for example, you could buy EMI and shock-hardened PCs, because anyone could make the hardware and build it to whatever special requirements. PCs soon began to replace specialized equipment in labs, like oscilloscopes and logic analyzers, with non-Microsoft software. PCs started replacing specialized industrial equipment, like programmable logic controllers and factory automation control consoles, again with third party software and sometimes unique hardware packaging. PCs started appearing in all sorts of military platforms, like tanks, ships, and planes, replacing previous special-purpose equipment. 

Duh.
This happened because of Moore's Law and the reality that PCs (and Macs), with their expansion bus capabilities provided an affordable way to develop hybrid software/hardware solutions for what had been dedicated "black box" products. While the PC did well among engineers for all manner of applications, the Mac dominated in creative applications enabling the revolutions in desktop publishing, desktop audio, and desktop video.
Ironically, the market for expandable PCs is drying up, as Moore's Law has provided the horsepower to handled most processing tasks WITHOUT the need for dedicated co-processors.
Nowhere was this more evident than in the market for equipment to create HD quality TV content. The manufacturers of dedicated video production equipment believed that the processing requirements for HD protect them from competition from computer-based tools for at least a decade, if not more. Instead, the same computer-based tools that took over the standard definition production markets in the '90s, easily scaled to handle HDTV, causing the traditional manufacturers to consolidate and wither on the vine.
This was not caused by Microsoft dominance. Many of these applications don't use Microsoft anything, although SOME do, after WinNT and WinXP proved to be stable enough.
Just another alternative to developing highly integrated products. PCs and Macs helped to bridge the worlds of dedicated products and software driven products. Now large scale integration is the path to survival, as is evidenced by the success of Apple today.
The success of PCs did cause Microsoft to buy up anything that looked good, and to use heavy-handed tactics against its competitors. But that was the EFFECT of the PCs success, NOT the cause.
If you say so. But one cannot deny that Microsoft used its control over PC operating systems AND Office to build their monopoly. 

Regards
Craig


----------------------------------------------------------------------
You can UNSUBSCRIBE from the OpenDTV list in two ways:
- Using the UNSUBSCRIBE command in your user configuration settings at FreeLists.org 
- By sending a message to: opendtv-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx with the word 
unsubscribe in the subject line.

Other related posts:

  1. Home
  2. opendtv
  3. Archive
  4. 08-2010