4 ms·

How did Microsoft become so popular in spite of all that?

• quesera 5y ago
  Hardware agnosticism (the huge PC-compatible industry of cheap computers), corporate standards and Office apps, and abusive business practices.
• ncmncm 5y ago
  Look up "monopoly". Users are not the customer. Equipment had, as it still does, MS pre-installed. You could not buy a system without, and contracts were written such that vendors could not afford to offer an alternative. Microsoft worked fine for the actual customers, the system integrators, because all it needed to do was install and register. Once the system was delivered to their customer, software failures were Somebody Else's Problem, and did not affect the actual customer. Economically speaking, software failure costs were exported to the hapless users, who were not sophisticated enough to blame anybody, and not in a position to demand satisfaction from anybody.