If Microsoft Never Existed...

[prathapml]

http://www.extremetech.com/print_article2/...a=162101,00.asp

An eye-opening article, for the perennial MS-bashers that abound.

If Microsoft Never Existed...

October 10, 2005

By Loyd Case

The alarm clock goes off, buzzing insistently until I reach out a hand and groggily slap at the button to silence the sound. I roll out of bed, pause for a few minutes, then head for the shower.

After breakfast, I head down to the office. I've got several different projects in flight. The new Macintosh has arrived, sporting a new operating system revision. Apple's finally broken the silly fixed memory limit for applications, but the new OS still can't multitask worth a ****. Apple's number one market share—about fifteen percent of the PC market—make it a little complacent. Of course, it helps that Apple is unified, and that the other 85% are running a variety of different operating systems.

I fire up the Macintosh I use as my office system and log onto the Internet using the latest AppleWeb, which is at least graphical, based on the Mosaic code. It beat out the line-mode graphics browsers on most of the CP/M machines littering my office. I could afford the resources for a graphical browser because I had an ISDN link running into the office. I'd talked to various phone companies about bringing in faster service, but they kept telling me there just were too many varieties of PCs with a confusing array of networking capabilities to really make high-speed access affordable for most homes.

Which brings me to one of my other projects—benchmark development. The multiple flavors of CP/M 2005 and Unix versions, make performance testing a headache. The good news these days is that developers are all writing relatively portable code, so most systems run the same—or at least similar—applications.

I sometimes wonder why anyone would be interested in owning a PC. It's not so much the hardware, which has steadily gotten cheaper. You can buy a decent 32-bit system based on an Intel, Motorola, or Zilog processor for only a couple thousand dollars these days. But the software costs are stunning. WordStar 2005 still runs several hundred dollars, though WordPerfect's pricing strategies since Borland bought the company has helped keep it more affordable. Lotus still has a lock on the spreadsheet market, and $695 is too much for most users.

The bottom line is that developing meaningful benchmarks for different operating systems is pretty painful. Then there's Apple and Commodore, who keep pressing us for graphics benchmarks, while IBM suggests that "real" graphical interfaces are still years away.

Of course, Commodore hasn't been the same since it was bought by Hewlett-Packard, but at least HP had the good sense to keep it fairly independent of the rest of HP. It was a classic HP move, though, to buy a PC company that had a dedicated following, but wasn't really mainstream. Still, HP's engineering has improved the Amiga's reliability over the years.

Suddenly, the doorbell rings. I head upstairs, and the UPS guy is there with a big box that has the HP logo on it. I perk up, realizing that it was, in fact, the new Commodore PC. According to the prebriefing from HP, the new Amiga actually has some kind of hardware accelerated 3D. The very concept of hardware 3D is pretty cool, but it's been restricted to the workstation world, mostly because the squabbling PC makers can't agree on a standard. The Unix advocates want to use PHIGS, but that's getting pretty long in the tooth. Apple has been pressing ahead with its own 3D API. HP's Commodore group has been pushing OpenGL, while the CP/M guys are all over the map, but it looks like they may be moving towards OpenGL. Even if they do, the various flavors of CP/M don't always play together well.

The net result is that game developers have pretty much thrown their hands in the air when it comes to PC games. Most PC games are pretty primitive, especially when compared with the latest consoles from Nintendo and Sony's Atari group.

I unpack the HP/Amiga and look over the packing list. According to HP, the base version will be only $599, but that's without any kind of storage. If you want to add a hard drive, that's another $500. The good news is that flash memory has gotten pretty cheap, so HP has equipped the system with 128MB of of flash memory and a whopping 1GB hard drive.

I hear the phone chime insistently, so I run back to the office and pick it up. It's the PR person for IBM. She seems particularly chirpy today. "Have you given more thought to taking a look at our latest PC?"

I sigh inwardly, but remain diplomatic. "I'm not sure I have the bandwidth now. Our readers are more into the home-brew scene, and they're not likely to be interested in a PC as expensive as yours. Plus, aren't IBM's more for businesses?"

"Well, we want to announce that we're dropping the price. The hardware is now under $2,000, with a 20GB hard drive and 256MB of RAM and a color monitor".

"Hmm, that is impressive. What about the OS?"

"We still offer CP/M 2006 at $395, but we're working on a new OS based on our mainframe VM that should be out any day now. Also, we have a home office bundle that includes Lotus and WordPerfect for only $995."

"What about graphics?"

"Well, we think text-based systems are what users really want."

I sigh. "Well, look, give me a call next week, after I dig out from some of my current projects."

I hang up the phone, just in time to hear the doorbell again. I pop upstairs, and this time it's FedEx, with a small package that was apparently shipped from somewhere in the Seattle area. I open it up, and a ziplock bag spills out with a CD in it. Handwritten on the CD is the text "MS-BASIC, version 11.0."

I sigh. Those Microsoft guys again, still trying to sell BASIC. Hasn't anyone told them no one uses BASIC any more?

[ripken204]

oh how i loved BASIC, so easy to code

[harunaksoy]

MS

Haha

Really i'm glad there is MS

[wolf7448]

How horrible the world would have been without microsoft!

[ripken204]

well if you think about it, some company would come through as the leader (mac)

hasnt MS pretty much stolen a bunch of ideas from the mac os's?

[SiMoNsAyS]

found it a funny article

it's nice m$ is there but i'm sure things would go different w/out them