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> > MS should've been able to simply just extend their OS monopoly into all platforms and all architectures, but they didn't, and to a vast swath of the world h

> > MS should've been able to simply just extend their OS monopoly into all platforms and all architectures, but they didn't, and to a vast swath of the world have become irrelevant, and worse, have lost their ability to become relevant. > Microsoft is, pretty famously, on the receiving end of one of the most significant antitrust judgments in modern history. Choosing to further a monopoly seems that it would be a phenomenally bad decision for the company. They tried and failed to extend their OS to other platforms and architectures many times. That they weren't successful wasn't due to some big brained decision to avoid antitrust issues. They just couldn't execute.

greggyb 2y ago
Windows runs in more places than it probably should. And the OS is just fine on other platforms. Windows on ARM works quite well. As I understand it, it worked just fine on Itanium. NT launched with support for PowerPC. I'm sure RISC-V support will be there pretty quickly. NT was designed for this sort of portability. Most user software is not ready for the transition. Microsoft doesn't impose the same kind of control over its application ecosystem as Apple does. This prevents Microsoft from being able to make architectural shifts like Apple has. Arguably, this more open and flexible ecosystem (and bending over backward compatibility) has been one of the driving factors in Windows's popularity over MacOS. I have no strong opinion about which is a better business strategy.