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Return of the '70s Microsoft Weirdos
theodp writes "On the eve of the company's move from Albuquerque to Seattle in 1978, a famous photo was taken (in a shopping mall no less) of the original Microsoft team, looking mighty sharp in their '70s outfits. Almost 30 years later, as Bill Gates prepares to depart from Microsoft, the group (looking older, but better) reconvened for a retake."
The 70s photo is of of a bright eyed bushy tailed group ready to take on the world. It tells a story, smacks of potential and is a slice of history.
The current photo is a happy snap without a story. It begs the question "Why?" It adds an ending to the 1970s photo that would have best been left unwritten, allowing each viewer of the 1970's photo to make their own judgement of history. The photo is like a cliched ending to a stereotypical Hollywood morality tale.
Although your post is obviously a joke, Windows did a fantastic job of getting the PC into the lives of average people. This is something that Linux is only beginning to do, IMO.
While I'd grant you the fact that Linux is indeed powering many of the systems people interact with, it remains that Linux has failed time and again to fulfill it's Year Of Desktop boasts.
Windows, for all it's warts, allowed almost everyone access to the world of computers.
Can we get rid of that horrific myth once and for all? If there had been no Windows, we would have had something else, and chances are it would have been much better.
yet had it not been for the visions of Bill Gates I sincerely doubt that computers would have gained the same traction in society as they have today.
Ridiculous. Computers gained the traction they did in society because they greatly increased productivity, and we'd already developed the technology (the silicon chip) to make them cheaply. Bill Gates just was able to capitalize on those two circumstances.
If Gates hadn't have done it, someone else would have. Jobs and Apple? IBM? Hell, maybe even Commodore.
The path taken would have been different for sure, but the entry of computers into society at the level they exist was invevidible. Maybe cross-platform applications would have become far more prevalent than they are now without Gates and Company trying to stifle any such products, and the OS would become largely irrelevant. Really, the OS IS irrelevant to the end-user. The only thing that provides any value are the applications.
AccountKiller
I'd say it held it back if anything.
I personally got into 16-bit, GUI computing in 1987 when my parents gave in to ten-year-old me and spent what for them was a load of money on an Atari ST. Over the next couple of years a lot of other kids my age followed suit and bought STs or Amigas. We were introduced to Windows (Version 2, y'know) at school and it just seemed hopelessly antiquated. We couldn't get our heads round why anybody would buy a system running this crap when they could get about five STs for the same price, all of which would run rings round the PC clone.
Of course, time passed and Atari, Commodore et al proved themselves much less proficient at running businesses than they were at designing computers, support waned and we found ourselves with no realistic option other than Windows (95 by this point). It still felt like a backward step and they'd had years to catch up.
So I reckon that if things had worked out a bit differently and, say, Commodore had been as ruthless in business as Microsoft, we'd be far ahead of where we are now. Or at least we'd have got to where we are now years ago. Windows never put a computer into my house, and it did a good job of killing off the better, cheaper alternatives that myself and millions liked me had plumped for.
Unix, born in the 1960s, had a 20 year head start over Microsoft, but Unix geeks just weren't interested in bringing a desktop to the masses in the same way Microsoft was.
It's certainly true we could have had something better -- Amiga, Commodore, Apple, etc. -- but if any one of those alternatives succeeded like Microsoft, it would have most likely adopted the same evil practices Microsoft used, and we'd probably end up with a similarly crappy system. In the alternate universe, it could very well have been Commodore Doors.
Fortunately, Linux and Mac are both making headway in the current time line.
Windows did a fantastic job of stifling innovation in the PC industry. Imagine how much more reliable and diverse computers would have been if Microsoft had not prevented innovation from occuring? Microsoft was more concerned about monopoly maintenance than innovation.
What you fail to understand is that, without Windows, something else would have filled the void. Progress in personal computers would not have stopped if Windows weren't around. Indeed, Microsoft was so concerned about monopoly maintenance, that innovation in the PC industry suffered. Progress might have been faster without Bill Gates' presence.