4 ms·

Persuasion (and the rest) was not better in the business sense. ie. As a CIO, I can go buy a suite of products that work together well. This is what Microsoft

Persuasion (and the rest) was not better in the business sense. ie. As a CIO, I can go buy a suite of products that work together well. This is what Microsoft recognized - the bundle and integration was the key.

pooper 4y ago
Maybe this is obvious but this sound like zoom vs Microsoft teams story just in the past.
loloquwowndueo 4y ago
Others also recognized this (Borland / WordPerfect aligning, and WordPerfect’s strategy was “we interact with other industry leading applications” (like 1-2-3) way before the days of Windows) but they failed to execute for other reasons, so it wasn’t like Microsoft figured out something else others didn’t. They used their first mover advantage and control of the platform to outmaneuver the competition.
- Arainach 4y ago
  WordPerfect couldn't even work well with itself and bungled the transition from DOS to GUI hard. Word's biggest advantage was that it worked great on Windows, while WordPerfect had to tiptoe around offending their existing DOS experts. History repeats itself in office suites (or at least rhymes) - the modern version of folks offended that the GUI version broke keyboard shortcuts are people convinced that because they managed to find things in the cluttered confusing menus, the ribbon must be awful.
  - mgoetzke 4y ago
    I still remember how many minutes it took to boot WordPerfect on the schools 486DX2 66Mhz ... I could time it to play a round of doom on another machine next to it.
    - happyopossum 4y ago
      I'm guessing that was loading over the LAN, as that's the only time I recall seeing multi-minute load times on a DX2. In that scenario, the speed of the computer was largely irrelevant, as files were being pulled from a NetWare server (reading files of very slow spinning disks) over a 10Mb shared media ethernet network.
  - kwanbix 4y ago
    One of the problems was that most companies where developing OS/2 version of their apps, as Microsoft had promised that was the future, while Microsoft was building Windows apps. By the time they realized their mistake, it was already too late.
  - pianoben 4y ago
    > the modern version of folks offended that the GUI version broke keyboard shortcuts are people convinced that because they managed to find things in the cluttered confusing menus, the ribbon must be awful To be fair, the real "competition" that the Ribbon displaced wasn't just menus, it was toolbars. Yes, the toolbar sections were arbitrary, but so were ribbon sections. Massive amounts of cheese moved, causing lots of confusion, and it also took way more screen real-estate. In Office, it was a net loss IMO. In the File Explorer, the ribbon was a disaster, in practice if not necessarily in theory. I wasn't offended by the switch, but it definitely felt like an unforced error.
  - KerrAvon 4y ago
    It probably helped that Word didn’t have much of a DOS user base to carry over, so Microsoft felt unconstrained by previous UI convention.
  - cafard 4y ago
    I am a slow typist, and I found that I could get ahead of WordPerfect 6 on Windows 95. Truly good typists must have found this to be a problem. I'm not sure how otherwise the 5.1 diehards were offended, though.
marricks 4y ago
And giving them away for free with an operating system to kill any competition that could exist? It's impossible to compete without making a whole different operating system when Microsoft was in it's anticompetitive heyday. Even through the lease of how our world is meant to work that's seems messed up.
- cupofpython 4y ago
  reminds me of trying to compete with imessage or facetime today
- mardifoufs 4y ago
  Wait, Microsoft used to bundle Office for free with windows? When did that happen? (I'm pretty unfamiliar with pre-2010 Microsoft so I'm genuinely wondering!)
  - yabatopia 4y ago
    That never happened.
  - emsixteen 4y ago
    I don't remember them doing it at least. Maybe before the '97 versions?
  - hnlmorg 4y ago
    I vaguely recall that in the Windows 3.11 days there was a cut down version of Office (might have been called something else?) which was either free or at least frequently bundled with new PCs in the same way that Windows was. I can’t find anything online that discusses this though. Most articles seem to talk about recent versions of Office (last 10 or 15 years) but the version I’m thinking of would have been pre-95.
    - jcheng 4y ago
      You might be thinking of Microsoft Works? I don't remember it being free but it was frequently offered as a low-cost add-on.

pooper 4y ago

Maybe this is obvious but this sound like zoom vs Microsoft teams story just in the past.

loloquwowndueo 4y ago

Others also recognized this (Borland / WordPerfect aligning, and WordPerfect’s strategy was “we interact with other industry leading applications” (like 1-2-3) way before the days of Windows) but they failed to execute for other reasons, so it wasn’t like Microsoft figured out something else others didn’t. They used their first mover advantage and control of the platform to outmaneuver the competition.

Arainach 4y ago
WordPerfect couldn't even work well with itself and bungled the transition from DOS to GUI hard. Word's biggest advantage was that it worked great on Windows, while WordPerfect had to tiptoe around offending their existing DOS experts. History repeats itself in office suites (or at least rhymes) - the modern version of folks offended that the GUI version broke keyboard shortcuts are people convinced that because they managed to find things in the cluttered confusing menus, the ribbon must be awful.
- mgoetzke 4y ago
  I still remember how many minutes it took to boot WordPerfect on the schools 486DX2 66Mhz ... I could time it to play a round of doom on another machine next to it.
  - happyopossum 4y ago
    I'm guessing that was loading over the LAN, as that's the only time I recall seeing multi-minute load times on a DX2. In that scenario, the speed of the computer was largely irrelevant, as files were being pulled from a NetWare server (reading files of very slow spinning disks) over a 10Mb shared media ethernet network.
- kwanbix 4y ago
  One of the problems was that most companies where developing OS/2 version of their apps, as Microsoft had promised that was the future, while Microsoft was building Windows apps. By the time they realized their mistake, it was already too late.
- pianoben 4y ago
  > the modern version of folks offended that the GUI version broke keyboard shortcuts are people convinced that because they managed to find things in the cluttered confusing menus, the ribbon must be awful To be fair, the real "competition" that the Ribbon displaced wasn't just menus, it was toolbars. Yes, the toolbar sections were arbitrary, but so were ribbon sections. Massive amounts of cheese moved, causing lots of confusion, and it also took way more screen real-estate. In Office, it was a net loss IMO. In the File Explorer, the ribbon was a disaster, in practice if not necessarily in theory. I wasn't offended by the switch, but it definitely felt like an unforced error.
- KerrAvon 4y ago
  It probably helped that Word didn’t have much of a DOS user base to carry over, so Microsoft felt unconstrained by previous UI convention.
- cafard 4y ago
  I am a slow typist, and I found that I could get ahead of WordPerfect 6 on Windows 95. Truly good typists must have found this to be a problem. I'm not sure how otherwise the 5.1 diehards were offended, though.

marricks 4y ago

And giving them away for free with an operating system to kill any competition that could exist? It's impossible to compete without making a whole different operating system when Microsoft was in it's anticompetitive heyday. Even through the lease of how our world is meant to work that's seems messed up.

cupofpython 4y ago
reminds me of trying to compete with imessage or facetime today
mardifoufs 4y ago
Wait, Microsoft used to bundle Office for free with windows? When did that happen? (I'm pretty unfamiliar with pre-2010 Microsoft so I'm genuinely wondering!)
- yabatopia 4y ago
  That never happened.
- emsixteen 4y ago
  I don't remember them doing it at least. Maybe before the '97 versions?
- hnlmorg 4y ago
  I vaguely recall that in the Windows 3.11 days there was a cut down version of Office (might have been called something else?) which was either free or at least frequently bundled with new PCs in the same way that Windows was. I can’t find anything online that discusses this though. Most articles seem to talk about recent versions of Office (last 10 or 15 years) but the version I’m thinking of would have been pre-95.
  - jcheng 4y ago
    You might be thinking of Microsoft Works? I don't remember it being free but it was frequently offered as a low-cost add-on.