6 ms·
> They seem to have a personal vendetta against Microsoft Probably because they were forced to use MS-DOS when so many better options were killed off by Micros
by beej71 5mo ago
> They seem to have a personal vendetta against Microsoft
Probably because they were forced to use MS-DOS when so many better options were killed off by Microsoft's monopolistic and anti-consumer underhanded business tactics...
I might be projecting.
- lstodd 5mo agoI was forced to use ms basic on my c64. Never forgive, never forget.
- selcuka 5mo agoI always found it weird to ship a BASIC interpreter that didn't have specialised commands (unless you count POKE) to access the graphics and sound capabilities of a computer like the C64. Some computers of the same era had vastly superior BASICs (such as Sinclair BASIC).
- chihuahua 5mo agoI agree, it seems very low-effort on Commodore's part to license this lowest-common-denominator BASIC with no support for graphics and sound other than POKE. Super lame, but they got away with it.
- voakbasda 5mo agoNo they didn’t. If they had, I would be typing this on my Commodore phone.
- nonfamous 5mo agoOTOH, I learned a hell of a lot about microprocessor internals by using POKE.
- antonvs 5mo agoWhat were the "so many better options" during that period? Have we found the only remaining CP/M fan?
- em-bee 5mo agoa bit later, but not much: OS/2
- pdonis 5mo agoThe fizzling of OS/2 was as much IBM's fault as anything. If they'd paid more attention to it sooner, MS might never have shipped Windows; they'd just have made their office applications OS/2 GUI programs. But IBM was too fixated on its mainframes to realize that they were giving away the PC market to MS (again--they did it the first time by licensing DOS to MS).
- stephenhuey 5mo agoBefore Facebook, I used Friendster. Years later, I read how Friendster execs were too busy patting themselves on the back and flying around on private jets to get around to fixing the horrendous site lag of sometimes a minute to even sign into the web app. How could a company's leadership be so foolish? I understood this paled in comparison to the doomed arrogance of IBM's leaders when I read stories about IBM's downfall in the delightful book In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters.
- beej71 5mo agoWait, did IBM license DOS to Microsoft? I thought IBM was looking for an operating system for the PC and approached Kildall about CP/M. That deal fell through, so they approached Microsoft. Gates didn't have anything, so he licensed QDOS for a song and licensed it to IBM.
- pdonis 5mo agoI was being somewhat sloppy. IBM bought DOS from Microsoft for the IBM PC--but neglected to buy exclusive rights to it, so Microsoft could and did sell it on its own as MS-DOS. (And later, other vendors began selling their own versions.) For PC users, this was a great deal, since it effectively made the IBM PC an open standard. But it meant that IBM captured much less value from DOS and PCs than Microsoft did.