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The Mircrosoft Question
I am finding myself still thinking about today's installment of our now
every-class discussion on Microsoft and how it all kinda generally sucks.
I believe that Microsoft is not really in control at least, or at least,
that they are in control simply by default. Consumers are not happy with
Microsoft, the government is not happy with Microsoft, even the
compo~rnofuter manufacturer (AKA the distributers) are not happy with
Microsoft. If any of these groups were give a strong, viable alternative,
then there would be no monopoly.
Of course, there are other OS's, but the companies that make them don't
seem to care for selling their products. Apple's mismanagement is
legendary. Sun has tried to enter to home foray with their Sparc
Classics, but Sun hasn't done anything about the fact that UNIX is still
far from accessible to the average consumer.
And how can any reasonable person look at IBM's size and power and not
believe that the non-popularity of OS/2 is a direct result of
mismanagement? I doubt it's possible--even IBM's own people will tell you
that.
All of these companies remind me of Commodore and Atari--superior products
which were never agressively marketed. If only Apple would have committed
themselves to the kind of marketing tactics which marked the launch of
Windows 95, then we would all be discussing the Justive Department's
investigation in Steve Jobs. Marketing is everything.
This is why Wal Mart is killing K-Mart and NationsBank lures in
unsuspecting college students for the great reaming of their lives (sorry,
went a little overboard there...), because Wal Mart and NationsBank know
how to saturate the marketplace with their names and trademarks so that
people believe they are only place to go. Microsoft has done the same.
I felt the need to point out the obvious, because I feel that Microsoft is
being unfairly persecuted. They are being punished because they are the
only people in their field with some kind of marketing intelligence, and
that's unfair. I want to see Gates bankrupted as much as the next person,
but I would like to see it done fairly and squarely.
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Of course, none of this really matters, because in two years, Gateway will
control at least 40% of the marketplace with 4000 MHz PowerPCs running
AmigaOS 4.0, but that's just how I see it. And afterall, I am a Perot
voter.
eric chernoff
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http://sunsite.unc.edu/echernof/
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