I'm not sure how willing I am to peg the PC platform to Microsoft. Just looking at the 1980's there were tons of operating systems being created & getting used

I'm not sure how willing I am to peg the PC platform to Microsoft. Just looking at the 1980's there were tons of operating systems being created & getting used. That there could be so many OSes was part & parcel to it suddenly being possible to create so much hardware. I see this as a time of diversification & enablement, a great opportunity, that yes, latter Microsoft did emerge top of the heap on. But they were more incidental a player than anything else, in my mind; they rode the wave that was happening. And they contributed very little. DOS with TSR driver stuff wasn't exactly a place for cooperation; it too was wild west.