4 ms·

This is getting tinfoil hattery. Microsoft sells a platform. The success of that platform is based on convincing users and their agents to buy the platform. Th

This is getting tinfoil hattery. Microsoft sells a platform. The success of that platform is based on convincing users and their agents to buy the platform. The platform is appealing because developers make money by creating apps or it. Has Microsoft done awful and possibly illegal things to competitors? Of course. But they've been the best for developers. Best dev tools, most powerful and widely deployed OS, at least in the PC era that made them famous and infamot.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago
Historically, Microsoft made a good platform. People wanted to use it. Then Microsoft consistently, over a period of years, in several different directions, tried to use the fact that people used Microsoft's platform to make it harder for people to use other platforms or products. That's not tinfoil hat stuff. It's historical fact, and I was around when it happened. They tried to, in their term, "leverage" their OS dominance. But on the receiving end of that leverage, it feels like being forced.
pritambaral 8y ago
> But they've been the best for developers. Microsoft has screwed developers on their own platforms too, when they didn't fall 100% in lockstep with Microsoft's whimsical decisions and about-turns. > Best dev tools, most powerful and widely deployed OS I strongly disagree they built the best dev tools or the "most powerful and widely deployed OS", but I'm going to talk about a more important point here. There's a difference between making a product that is better that everything else, and preventing others from making a product better than yours. When you let one maker — irrespective of whether they make the best product or not — bully and cheat their way into preventing other makers from competing, you are and shall be left with a sub-par product. One example: Microsoft single-handedly held back the web for close to a decade, all so it could continue to sell Windows licenses. As a result, the world suffered. There's a lot of progress that was stifled and/or killed off — some of which we may never get again — by Microsoft, just to protect its OS, by abusing its position on the market. It wasn't their dev tools or their "most powerful and widely deployed OS" that made them infamous, it was their own actions.

AnimalMuppet 8y ago

Historically, Microsoft made a good platform. People wanted to use it. Then Microsoft consistently, over a period of years, in several different directions, tried to use the fact that people used Microsoft's platform to make it harder for people to use other platforms or products. That's not tinfoil hat stuff. It's historical fact, and I was around when it happened. They tried to, in their term, "leverage" their OS dominance. But on the receiving end of that leverage, it feels like being forced.

pritambaral 8y ago

> But they've been the best for developers. Microsoft has screwed developers on their own platforms too, when they didn't fall 100% in lockstep with Microsoft's whimsical decisions and about-turns. > Best dev tools, most powerful and widely deployed OS I strongly disagree they built the best dev tools or the "most powerful and widely deployed OS", but I'm going to talk about a more important point here. There's a difference between making a product that is better that everything else, and preventing others from making a product better than yours. When you let one maker — irrespective of whether they make the best product or not — bully and cheat their way into preventing other makers from competing, you are and shall be left with a sub-par product. One example: Microsoft single-handedly held back the web for close to a decade, all so it could continue to sell Windows licenses. As a result, the world suffered. There's a lot of progress that was stifled and/or killed off — some of which we may never get again — by Microsoft, just to protect its OS, by abusing its position on the market. It wasn't their dev tools or their "most powerful and widely deployed OS" that made them infamous, it was their own actions.