4 ms·

> genuinely looked back then like Microsoft was going to wipe out everything except for the thousands of companies, academics and individuals who said NO

ghaff 4y ago
There were some exceptions like Sun but the vast majority of the technology industry absolutely saw Wintel as inevitable whether they liked the idea or not. You may think they were wrong--and they were to a large degree--but it was absolutely the prevailing sentiment at the time.
- mistrial9 4y ago
  with all due respect, please re-think your words.. There are millions of active minds, thousands of companies, multiple world markets.. and you reduce the entire globe to "it was thought to be inevitable" ?! do I have to point out the reductio ad absurdum element to that statement? I was there, others here too..
  - browningstreet 4y ago
    In party conversation parlance, I think the sentiment was common. Microsoft was actually subject to a monopoly decree, they invested in Apple to prop up a competitor, they were eating the lunch of workstations, and we were years away from the "Year of the Linux Desktop". Probably many HNers were part of the other side -- running the workstations, installing Linux, excited about Netscape, but Microsoft felt like a Goliath. That they were eventually humbled, now we live with many Goliaths.
- TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
  It might have been the prevailing sentiment... of all the Microsoft-subsidized trade rags. I just keep thinking how differently "computing" might have evolved in the mid-to-late 90's if other companies had gotten into a spending war with Microsoft for favorable coverage in the press. It's a tradition that Gates continues to this day with his foundation, and which others seem still yet to learn.
  - ghaff 4y ago
    It really didn't have much to do with ad spending. There were a bunch of Unix-oriented trade rags as well. There was mostly a lot of appetite from both buyers and application vendors to standardize at the operating system level--which Unix in the mid-90s decidedly was not. There was an effort to come up with a multi-vendor Unix, which SCO predictably screwed up in their pre-lawsuit guise. Linux would eventually mature sufficiently and gain business support for this role on servers but that didn't really happen in a major way until the 2000s, accelerated by IBM's endorsement.
  - andrewstuart 4y ago
    Unix looked very much to be on the ropes at the time. It was extremely fragmented and warring with itself. There was no Linux to unify the Unix-like operating systems. Unix was fraught with lawsuits and licensing claims and issues. I worked in the heart of the corporate world and at this time the sentiment has changed from "you can't get fired buying IBM" to "you can't get fired buying Microsoft". As @gaff said in this thread said - it has nothing to do with Microsoft ad spend or what the magazines said - it was dead obvious. And were it not for Linux then it would have been a Microsoft world. Remember also it was Microsoft that saved Apple from bankruptcy when jobs returned. I do think that if not Linux then FreePSD would likely have become todays "Linux".
    - ghaff 4y ago
      I did a podcast series on "Was open source inevitable?" a couple years back which ended up more focused on infrastructure and Linux than it probably should have been. [0] But the general conclusion of my guests was that it probably was. (And, yes, some variant of BSD in spite of the legal hangover. Bryan Cantrill argues this specifically.) I do think that absent an open source movement beyond the fringe, Microsoft might have ended up more dominant commercially. [0] https://bitmason.blogspot.com/2020/06/podcast-was-open-source-inevitable-part.html https://bitmason.blogspot.com/2020/06/podcast-was-open-sourc...
  - nl 4y ago
    This is the wrong take. Instead it's the typical low end overtakes the high end that we've seen over and over. MSDOS on the PC was clearly not suitable for real business apps. Well not for networked ones. Well not for ones that need a server. Well not for GUI apps. Well not for apps that needed more powerful CPUs than those you x86 chips. Wait.. why are all our customers on Windows NT on Pentiums?
layer8 4y ago
Thousands!

ghaff 4y ago

There were some exceptions like Sun but the vast majority of the technology industry absolutely saw Wintel as inevitable whether they liked the idea or not. You may think they were wrong--and they were to a large degree--but it was absolutely the prevailing sentiment at the time.

mistrial9 4y ago
with all due respect, please re-think your words.. There are millions of active minds, thousands of companies, multiple world markets.. and you reduce the entire globe to "it was thought to be inevitable" ?! do I have to point out the reductio ad absurdum element to that statement? I was there, others here too..
- browningstreet 4y ago
  In party conversation parlance, I think the sentiment was common. Microsoft was actually subject to a monopoly decree, they invested in Apple to prop up a competitor, they were eating the lunch of workstations, and we were years away from the "Year of the Linux Desktop". Probably many HNers were part of the other side -- running the workstations, installing Linux, excited about Netscape, but Microsoft felt like a Goliath. That they were eventually humbled, now we live with many Goliaths.
TheRealDunkirk 4y ago
It might have been the prevailing sentiment... of all the Microsoft-subsidized trade rags. I just keep thinking how differently "computing" might have evolved in the mid-to-late 90's if other companies had gotten into a spending war with Microsoft for favorable coverage in the press. It's a tradition that Gates continues to this day with his foundation, and which others seem still yet to learn.
- ghaff 4y ago
  It really didn't have much to do with ad spending. There were a bunch of Unix-oriented trade rags as well. There was mostly a lot of appetite from both buyers and application vendors to standardize at the operating system level--which Unix in the mid-90s decidedly was not. There was an effort to come up with a multi-vendor Unix, which SCO predictably screwed up in their pre-lawsuit guise. Linux would eventually mature sufficiently and gain business support for this role on servers but that didn't really happen in a major way until the 2000s, accelerated by IBM's endorsement.
- andrewstuart 4y ago
  Unix looked very much to be on the ropes at the time. It was extremely fragmented and warring with itself. There was no Linux to unify the Unix-like operating systems. Unix was fraught with lawsuits and licensing claims and issues. I worked in the heart of the corporate world and at this time the sentiment has changed from "you can't get fired buying IBM" to "you can't get fired buying Microsoft". As @gaff said in this thread said - it has nothing to do with Microsoft ad spend or what the magazines said - it was dead obvious. And were it not for Linux then it would have been a Microsoft world. Remember also it was Microsoft that saved Apple from bankruptcy when jobs returned. I do think that if not Linux then FreePSD would likely have become todays "Linux".
  - ghaff 4y ago
    I did a podcast series on "Was open source inevitable?" a couple years back which ended up more focused on infrastructure and Linux than it probably should have been. [0] But the general conclusion of my guests was that it probably was. (And, yes, some variant of BSD in spite of the legal hangover. Bryan Cantrill argues this specifically.) I do think that absent an open source movement beyond the fringe, Microsoft might have ended up more dominant commercially. [0] https://bitmason.blogspot.com/2020/06/podcast-was-open-source-inevitable-part.html https://bitmason.blogspot.com/2020/06/podcast-was-open-sourc...
- nl 4y ago
  This is the wrong take. Instead it's the typical low end overtakes the high end that we've seen over and over. MSDOS on the PC was clearly not suitable for real business apps. Well not for networked ones. Well not for ones that need a server. Well not for GUI apps. Well not for apps that needed more powerful CPUs than those you x86 chips. Wait.. why are all our customers on Windows NT on Pentiums?

layer8 4y ago

Thousands!