4 ms·
Microsoft lost to the web. And the ubiquity of the web is what made the iPhone and iPad viable. So maybe Microsoft didn't have to lose, but they did, so I gues
by extension 15y ago
Microsoft lost to the web. And the ubiquity of the web is what made the iPhone and iPad viable.
So maybe Microsoft didn't have to lose, but they did, so I guess we'll never really know.
- WayneDB 15y agoThe vast majority of web users are Windows users. How has Microsoft lost?
- bad_user 15y agoIn what sense has Microsoft lost? Sure, they lost their lock-in, but everything else is pretty much the same.
- revscat 15y agoIn the sense that Microsoft is no longer paid that much attention to. There was a time when Microsoft was feared, hated, and begrudgingly respected. Now? They're like an aging uncle who was once a celebrity rock star but whose prime has long since past, even if he refuses to recognize it. Sure, you still hear his songs occasionally, but they're on oldies stations.
- philwelch 15y agoThe purpose of a business is to make money, which I assure you Microsoft still does.
- extension 15y agoThat you can buy a non-Windows computer or device and still do most of the things anyone cares about doing on a computer is exactly what Microsoft didn't want to happen. Now they are competing on a level field, and not losing ground too fast, but their reign of total domination of personal computing is over.
- roc 15y ago> "Microsoft lost to the web." But not because Apple won anything. Nor would things be much different today, for Apple, if 99% of desktop PCs were still running IE. (If anything, problematic web standards would push more focus to the App Store.)
- extension 15y agoIf IE had 99% market share today, it would presumably have been because Microsoft's plan to proprietize the web was a success. Dependence on ActiveX, VBScript, and whatnot would have made non-Windows web gadgets technically infeasible.
- roc 15y agoI don't know about infeasible. It would've looked a lot more like the cell phone market used to. That is, you could leverage the internet to positive effect, but only if you controlled the front-end and the back-end, ala RIM. And Apple could and did do that; albeit their branded services weren't adopted very highly out of the gate as people had choices. But the iPhone still could have happened.