Microsoft PC OS Dominance

Or you could simply point out that a lot of companies failed because Microsoft sucked the air out of the OS market after IBM foolishly licensed DOS from them under non-exclusive terms. If IBM had bought DOS outright (or bought CP/M) the IBM PC would probably have been a successful integrated hardware+software business (actually it was, but it would probably have lasted longer) like so many others. Even without owning DOS, IBM tried to block clones, but its BIOS was too small a barrier to entry.

The market was different back then. There were a lot of choices, like PC-DOS, and even other computer systems like Mac, Atari, Amiga etc. MS-DOS itself did not give them a monopoly. It was an advantage of course, but not a "competition killer". It could have been IBM's OS/2 that would have "won", or a world with more cross platform development.

Sure, it would have been different, but in how many of those parallel universes would it have been better without MS? Keep in mind that the biggest competition for MS in those early days was Apple and IBM. Apple of that era coming out on top would have resulted in far fewer people gaining access to computers and far, far slower rate of innovation, especially in hardware. The same would have been true for IBM coming out on top as well.Microsoft was one of the few companies which pursued an ope

IBM at its peak was much more dominant than Microsoft ever was. Microsoft -- thanks to IBM (via PC DOS and Basic) -- eventually became the IBM of software. But Intel became the IBM of processors, Cisco the IBM of routers, Google the IBM of the web, and so on. IBM was the IBM of everything.Incidentally, Microsoft co-developed OS/2 and there were only three problems with it: (1) you couldn't sell PCs running OS/2 -- IBM tried; (2) you couldn't get software houses to write p

Microsoft in the 1990s, had tried to find a replacement for DOS partnering up with IBM. Commodore had the Amiga, Atari had the Atari ST, and Apple had the Macintosh and their operating systems were better than DOS. So out of an advanced DOS project came OS/2 and then the GUI for OS/2. IBM had their own OS/2 and Microsoft had their own OS/2 as well.Microsoft was working on Microsoft OS/2 NT 3.0 when they broke off from IBM, and then renamed it Microsoft Windows NT 3.1

You have to draw a distinction between what IBM did as a response to competition in our actual history and what IBM would have done had Microsoft never existed. IBM would have almost certainly continued what it had done before and what virtually every other company was doing at the time: offering bundled hardware/software solutions, using customer lock-in and FUD like weapons, and pushing incredibly high profit markups on everything. It's certainly the same thing Apple did. And it's the same roa

IBM could have had (something like) Windows. They famously misunderstood that they commoditized themselves out of the whole-PC market, and the truly big players to remain would be those to achieve mastery in creation of the components of the market. Like Intel and CPUs, or Microsoft and software.

BeOS was a great product. Apple almost bought it. Part of their problem was that Microsoft was charging people for DOS on every PC that shipped, regardless of whether it actually shipped with DOS. Once Microsoft did that, it pretty much killed a other PC operating systems. The Microsoft of the 90's was lethal. Nothing compares to them today.

Short version, IIRC: Microsoft made MS-DOS, but their application software offerings for MS-DOS (Word, Works) were not compelling enough; other vendors had that market (WordPerfect, Lotus Symphony) pretty much sewn up. Then came Microsoft Windows. Other companies did not want to spend huge amounts of resources porting their applications to what was essentially a niche Microsoft add-on on top of MS-DOS. Microsoft, on the other hand, had every reason to bet big on their ow

Laughable. MS was terrified of competition so they always went after competitors. The only reason it was MS instead of IBM is IBM was scared of more government regulation on their business.Apple could have easily had this market and more if they'd opened up.Maybe you didn't work as a developer in the 80s. I used Borland, Watcom and many other vendors along with many other OSes as well. Magically in the mid 1990s you could even run something called Linux on your PC.