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Microsoft wasn’t the clear market leader in the 70s and 80s. Look for example at the spreadsheet. Multiplan was loosing against Lotus 123. (123 being the VisiCa

Microsoft wasn’t the clear market leader in the 70s and 80s. Look for example at the spreadsheet. Multiplan was loosing against Lotus 123. (123 being the VisiCalc killer itself) Microsoft first launched Multiplan as its spreadsheet software on Macintosh (1984), it was something like the 22th or 23rd port of Multiplan! Then in 1985 very first version of Excel (Macintosh only) It was an incredible step up from text-screen spreadsheet softwares, but only on Macintosh so Lotus didn’t cared. Then Excel 2.0 got released (1 year before windows, using the windows window manager underneath!) and as people who saw it at the time remember thinking: "lotus was toast" I studied the spreadsheet applications design history to Create my class History of Tech Design [0] and got a totally new perspective on how good the excel team was at getting things right. [0] https://workflowy.com/s/strate-history-of-te/a4ID6kKtznLwQC7C https://workflowy.com/s/strate-history-of-te/a4ID6kKtznLwQC7...

mro_name 5y ago
They were the market leader for PC operating systems since they entered the market with MS-Dos and managed to preserve that monopoly after the transition from TUI to GUI. And later they expanded into applications as we know today and built monopolies for email, texts, presentations, spreadsheets and browsing the information superhighway. All prior art, indeed, near zero innovation. The accountants love it.
- iso1631 5y ago
  Microsoft used their monopoly position to expand throughout the 80s and 90s. AARD code, Stacker, Ichitaro etc.
urthor 5y ago
Out of curiosity, why did Macintosh fall behind in the late 80s? Why didn't they charge ahead and achieve dominance in the 90s?
- zozbot234 5y ago
  They didn't fall behind all that much, they were just too expensive. The PC platform used to be expensive too, but then became quite a bit cheaper in the 1990s.
  - ratww 5y ago
    Yep, that's the answer. But even in 1984 already, the year the Mac was released, there were PC-compatible machines like the Tandy 1000 for less than half: $1200. And the difference became bigger with time. The Mac was $2495 and AFAIK the lowest it got was around $1400 in the 80s. Plus, the Mac was not upgradeable.

mro_name 5y ago

They were the market leader for PC operating systems since they entered the market with MS-Dos and managed to preserve that monopoly after the transition from TUI to GUI. And later they expanded into applications as we know today and built monopolies for email, texts, presentations, spreadsheets and browsing the information superhighway. All prior art, indeed, near zero innovation. The accountants love it.

iso1631 5y ago
Microsoft used their monopoly position to expand throughout the 80s and 90s. AARD code, Stacker, Ichitaro etc.

urthor 5y ago

Out of curiosity, why did Macintosh fall behind in the late 80s? Why didn't they charge ahead and achieve dominance in the 90s?

zozbot234 5y ago
They didn't fall behind all that much, they were just too expensive. The PC platform used to be expensive too, but then became quite a bit cheaper in the 1990s.
- ratww 5y ago
  Yep, that's the answer. But even in 1984 already, the year the Mac was released, there were PC-compatible machines like the Tandy 1000 for less than half: $1200. And the difference became bigger with time. The Mac was $2495 and AFAIK the lowest it got was around $1400 in the 80s. Plus, the Mac was not upgradeable.