Invisible wrote:
> Nobody buys MS because they like it. They buy MS because there's nothing 
> else on offer.

Right. Because neither Apple nor Linux are significant. And we all know 
there were no competing operating systems available when MS-DOS hit the scene.

The basic problem is that an OS is a natural monopoly, and it's also an 
ecosystem for the software that runs on it. Nobody buys an OS for an OS's 
sake. They buy it to run programs, and MS if nothing encourages programmers 
to write programs for non-programmers. Apple is a hardware company, and 
while they do good stuff, their economic model is more limiting due to that 
control.

Linux is free. And it's still not good enough to get people to abandon 
Microsoft's (or Apple's) stuff for desktop work. Even when the product runs 
Linux and there are thousands of Linux servers, the companies are still 
using MS and Apple on the desktop, because the Linux apps just aren't there 
yet to support business users.  And the Linux apps that *are* killer apps 
are open, so they get ported to Apple and Microsoft anyway. :-)

In the places where Microsoft competes but haven't quite hit exactly the 
right price/performance/reliability/etc ratio, there's all kinds of 
competition. What are the most popular cell phones? WinCE-based phones? Name 
two other popular gaming consoles that Microsoft doesn't make? Name some 
free email services besides Hotmail? Some desktop conferencing besides MS's?

There's definitely a network effect going on, and Microsoft definitely 
squashed a lot of competition by contracting to have their stuff on every 
machine sold for a while, but it's the network effects and the availability 
of the kind of business software that you and I don't really use that keeps 
Microsoft rolling.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Ada - the programming language trying to avoid
    you literally shooting yourself in the foot.

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