4 ms·
It's an entirely predictable thing, but I find that at my age (53) I've started being kind of stunned at how some aspects of computing history have become just
by ubermonkey 3y ago
It's an entirely predictable thing, but I find that at my age (53) I've started being kind of stunned at how some aspects of computing history have become just that to younger people: History, with perhaps no more real bearing on the hear-and-now for younger people than, say, the Teapot-Dome scandal.
I've had a number of conversations with people in the last few years who didn't work through the 90s, and who therefore had NO idea the absolutely stranglehold MSFT had on computing in that era. And I get it; it's hard to see today, when we have 5 or 6 viable platforms to work on (two flavors of mobile; Mac; Windows; ChromeOS; Linux). The degree to which being non-Windows in that era put you in a bit of a desert, especially as Apple hit its darkest years, is really really difficult to grasp now.
If you try to explain the wildly predatory things MSFT did, like insisting that every computer sold include a Windows license, they just sound like evil overlord plots. "Whoa, that can't be right..."
And maybe the biggest one is the fact that Apple itself -- now a juggernaut of profitability and stability, and a real leader in the industry on several fronts -- very nearly went under, which would've taken with it the only other viable desktop OS of the time, further cementing Redmond's domination.
Its recovery, starting with the iMac, is absolutely one of the greatest turnarounds in American business history.
Obviously, it wasn't all Steve, and required a lot of things to go their way, but the results are still amazing to me.
And yet: If you're 25, Apple has ALWAYS been who Apple is today. If you're 25, we've always had great options for computing environments with near-parity experiences. If you're 25, no single vendor has had anything like the kind of market power MSFT had.
It's a weird thing to realize the events of your early adulthood have become paragraphs in history books but here we are.