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Did Microsoft ever have a monopoly on OSes? Hardly. Look at Mac OS, OS/2, BeOS, AIX, Solaris, Debian, Slackware, SUSE, Red Hat, RISC OS, BeOS, QNX, OpenBSD, Fre
by halo 16y ago
Did Microsoft ever have a monopoly on OSes? Hardly. Look at Mac OS, OS/2, BeOS, AIX, Solaris, Debian, Slackware, SUSE, Red Hat, RISC OS, BeOS, QNX, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, IRIX, VMS, Palm OS, EPOC OS (nee Symbian) etc.
- podperson 16y agoI'm replying to the reply to your post, and not your post because for some reason I can't reply directly to it. Microsoft has >90% market share in OSes. The existence of a rival product doesn't negate a monopoly. The existence of a true alternative negates a monopoly. Apple doesn't even have a dominant share of ANYTHING except portable music players (which, incidentally, play content from other vendors just fine -- oh and you can _legally_ rip your Apple DRMed music to CD and play it anywhere so where's the lock-in?).
- Stormbringer 16y agoIf the reply gets beyond a certain depth there is a built in delay (that gets longer the deeper you get). It's there because Hacker news has decided that there is no value in deep conversations, they prefer the more shallow ones and feel that they get a better result that way. Presumably it also serves as a brake on certain kinds of anti-social behaviour such as flamewars and trolling. It's in the terms of service or rules for newbies or something like that. (edit: went looking for the text in the guidelines so I could link it, but couldn't find it. Sorry. It might be one of PGs articles that I was thinking of)
- calloc 16y agoFrom what I've gathered from other hn'ers was that the reply was gone so that it couldn't turn into a quick back and forth between two authors. If you ever need to reply, click the link button for that comment, the reply box is now available.
- danilocampos 16y agoMS had over 90% of the market. Apple is selling 90% of phones?
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- halo 16y agoMicrosoft never had 90% of the "operating system" market. They had 90% of the "desktop operating system" market. What marketshare does iTunes have in "phone synchronisation software"? Carefully define your market and you can probably find a monopoly.
- danilocampos 16y agoThat really sounds like a distinction without a difference. MS had control of 90% of consumer and office computing. True? Apple doesn't control anywhere close to that in phones.
- halo 16y agoI disagree with your premise that embedded devices and servers don't matter.
- danilocampos 16y agoMy premise is that embedded devices and servers don't matter to the vast majority of people who use computers, then and now. If you're a home or office user, you can't use a server to do your work. You can't use an ATM to do your work. You can't really be pretending the desktop computer market is some narrow or obscure thing, can you? In 1998, as a home or office user, you had a very specific set of choices for computing tasks, of which Microsoft controlled the vast majority.
- fabjan 16y agoServers, embedded devices and PCs are totally different markets.
- pohl 16y agoThe answer to your question is "yes" according to the antitrust litigation that actually took place — and if you would like to understand why, then pay close attention to the phrase "relevant market" in the "Conclusions of Law" document from the MS v DOJ case. This phrase plays an important role in determining monopoly status (the question raised in this thread) and this document makes interesting reading along these lines. http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f218600/218633.htm http://www.justice.gov/atr/cases/f218600/218633.htm Whether this zone of commercial activity actually qualifies as a market...depends on whether it includes all products "reasonably interchangeable by consumers for the same purposes." ..."Because the ability of consumers to turn to other suppliers restrains a firm from raising prices above the competitive level, the definition of the 'relevant market' rests on a determination of available substitutes." The court's opinion was that the operating systems you mentioned were not "reasonably interchangeable by consumers for the same purposes". The fact that Microsoft would be able to to raise prices "above the competitive level" was key. This was very much the case in the 90s when this litigation took place.
- halo 16y agoI would have to say that's a pretty harsh indictment of Linux distributions and Mac OS by the US DoJ. By that definition, it makes me wonder if iTunes has a monopoly in "phone synchronisation software". This monopoly allows Apple to raise its store prices above a competitive level.
- pohl 16y agoI would have to say that's a pretty harsh indictment of Linux distributions and Mac OS by the US DoJ. On the one hand, it's a little worse than you're suggesting because this was actually the opinion of the court. The DoJ was just the plaintiff. On the other hand, the implied indictment of Linux and MacOS of the era isn't as bad as you're suggesting. I encourage you to go though the document, since you have the URL handy and I gave you the phrase to grep for. Take a look at the following excerpt: The Court has already found, based on the evidence in this record, that there are currently no products - and that there are not likely to be any in the near future - that a significant percentage of computer users worldwide could substitute for Intel-compatible PC operating systems without incurring substantial costs. Now I know you're tempted to rephrase this in some way that bolsters your perspective, but be careful with such temptations, for if & when Apple finds themselves in the same hot water it's going to happen through litigation and the determination will be made in a court — where the tool of choice is linguistic precision in general, and pulling key definitions & tests from precedent in particular. Every word in the above quote has weight, and you should make no substitutions if you want to gauge how things might play out were litigation brought against Apple. In the above excerpt, note the phrase "Intel-compatible PC operating systems", which is part of the definition of the "relevant market" under which the determination of monopoly status was judged. The MacOS of the era ran only on PowerPC machines and some aging Motorola 680x0 hardware. So there's no harsh indictment of MacOS here. As for linux of the 90s, I suppose you could look to phrases like "significant percentage of computer users worldwide could substitute" and "without incurring substantial costs". Linux distributions of the era could not rise to that standard. Although you would be correct to note that vendor lock-in played an important role in those "substantial costs".
- Stormbringer 16y agoThe problem is that they had a huge share of the market, and they abused that to keep other players out. With respect to computer manufacturers they had a variety of illegal practices which meant that it was difficult or impossible for them to sell other OSes. Since Apple doesn't sell its OS for generic PCs, the main player this hurt was Linux. From memory an example of this was that the OEMs had a huge discount on the 'face' price of Windows, but if they sold anything except Windows they couldn't get this special price, even for the Windows computers they did sell. Similarly they drove Netscape out of business by bundling Internet Explorer with their OS, and then later retrofitting the OS so that IE was baked into a bunch of things that it hadn't been baked into previously (such as Explorer), such that removing IE and replacing it with Netscape or $other_browser would actually break Windows. They didn't have to do that, and it didn't make any sense to do that, except for the express purpose of breaking Netscape. As for OS/2, allegedly Microsoft stole all the good technology to use in their own products, and then played silly buggers to the point where it was massively delayed. BeOS died an unnatural death, which is odd. Neal Stephenson has this interesting article about that. I'll link to the cliff notes in case you're in a hurry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Beginning..._Was_the_Command_Line http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_the_Beginning..._Was_the_Com... The thing that gets me about BeOS is everyone I personally know who used it raves about it... but when I go looking for old pictures of it, it is butt ugly. I mean truly hideous. Dos pre-windows 3.1 hideous. It is worse than 90s Linux is how bad it is. :D But hey, apparently it was the superior technology, and yet nobody would sell any PCs with it installed ... FOR SOME STRANGE REASON (cf above discussion on Microsoft's 'intimate' relationship with PC manufacturers)