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“Taking royalties on Android phones and some dark UX patterns in Windows 10” ... I don’t think you realize just how bad it was in the late 1990’s. Imagine a pa

“Taking royalties on Android phones and some dark UX patterns in Windows 10” ... I don’t think you realize just how bad it was in the late 1990’s. Imagine a parallel world where in 2018: - Android is proprietary software and is the OS on 95% of smart phones worldwide; it costs $140 per copy and licensing is strictly policed - GoogleOS (or some such) is similarly proprietary and commands 97% of the OS market on personal computers and data center nachines combined. $199.99 per license ($600 for servers), volume licensing arrangements available. - Linux and Mac OS are used here and there, but they’re not for “real work” (except in a few narrow markets) and those who push for them are laughed at. Worst, Google takes full advantage of their monopoly positions in OS markets: - they sell essential apps that compete with 3rd party apps by using powerful secret APIs and system calls - They pre-install some apps for free (most notably Chrome) to gain market share in other markets - They copyright their APIs and threaten lawsuits against anyone who implements their interfaces elsewhere - they fight against open standards and come up with their own, competing, proprietary standards. When that doesn’t work, they adopt the open standard (amidst a huge marketing campaign) but later add a large number of proprietary extensions to their implementations, to lock people in to their implementation and further edge out competition. - when an open-source OS or competing product starts to gain in popularity, they spread FUD (fear, uncertainty, and doubt) through their PR machine. It works marvelously, especially in the corporate world. - they strong-arm and manipulate hardware manufacturers via hardball contracts to pre-install Google’s OSes on at least X% of machines sold (where X is a high percentage) with costly consequences if they fail to do so. ————- That’s a lot like the world where Microsoft was king. They seemed absolutely undefeatable. And if the cloud and mobile revolutions hadn’t happened, they certainly still would be.

beagle3 8y ago
Get off my lawn kid, I've been programming professionally since 1989, and using computers before that. I even worked at the time for a company that was almost wiped out by Microsoft's anti-competitive practices. I was tangentially there when Microsoft kept pissing into the ISO stnadards process pool (from the diving board, if I might add) with OOXML, and that was only 2009 (Not even 10 years ago). I know exactly how bad it has been. I see the same data you do, but my interpretation is different: Microsoft is the same bully it always was, except the world doesn't let them bully as much. They still bully as much as they can get away with, though -- with the Win10 being a recent egregious example. That's all I'm saying: Color me skeptical about the "new" kind, ethical Microsoft.

beagle3 8y ago

Get off my lawn kid, I've been programming professionally since 1989, and using computers before that. I even worked at the time for a company that was almost wiped out by Microsoft's anti-competitive practices. I was tangentially there when Microsoft kept pissing into the ISO stnadards process pool (from the diving board, if I might add) with OOXML, and that was only 2009 (Not even 10 years ago). I know exactly how bad it has been. I see the same data you do, but my interpretation is different: Microsoft is the same bully it always was, except the world doesn't let them bully as much. They still bully as much as they can get away with, though -- with the Win10 being a recent egregious example. That's all I'm saying: Color me skeptical about the "new" kind, ethical Microsoft.