Maybe. One of the things Microsoft brought to the table was the marketing and the push to bring desktop computing into enterprise. I don't think we're where we are if that doesn't happen, and lots of others had the opportunity to go there, but balked for whatever reason.
The other question, the old time-travel question, is how different do things have to be before we're not recognizably in the same place. One could almost argue that there's the David-Goliath thing going on, motivating people. Without that, not as many are as invested in bringing their A game or getting into the game in the first place.
And then again, in the absence of a big evil like Microsoft, someone else could very well have taken its place entirely and we could be indistinguishably in the same place, complete with big, cumbersome, monopolistic software giant that stifles innovation, etc. Jobs thought it would be IBM; but for Microsoft it might have been.
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Maybe. One of the things Microsoft brought to the table was the marketing and the push to bring desktop computing into enterprise. I don't think we're where we are if that doesn't happen, and lots of others had the opportunity to go there, but balked for whatever reason.
The other question, the old time-travel question, is how different do things have to be before we're not recognizably in the same place. One could almost argue that there's the David-Goliath thing going on, motivating people. Without that, not as many are as invested in bringing their A game or getting into the game in the first place.
And then again, in the absence of a big evil like Microsoft, someone else could very well have taken its place entirely and we could be indistinguishably in the same place, complete with big, cumbersome, monopolistic software giant that stifles innovation, etc. Jobs thought it would be IBM; but for Microsoft it might have been.