5 ms·

I have to disagree with one of the final conclusions of the article. For me, at least, it's far easier to imagine life without Apple or Amazon than it is to ima

I have to disagree with one of the final conclusions of the article. For me, at least, it's far easier to imagine life without Apple or Amazon than it is to imagine life without Microsoft. Say Amazon goes bankrupt tomorrow. All of their products stop working over night. Many people are upset because you can't get things as cheap, but for the most part they go to other online retailers, of which there are many. The Kindle is pretty easy to imagine life without, as are most of the other services. AWS going black would frustrate much of the web, but most of that could be taken up by the litany of providers in that space. Apple is a little trickier, but to my knowledge (take with a whole shaker of salt) they don't have a huge ongoing set of services, and most Apple skills are pretty transferable to other *nix style services. If anything, I could imagine that Linux might get a whole lot of extra designers. The iPhone would be missed, and there would be some havoc as people rush to alternatives, but it doesn't do anything truly special that an S4 or equivalent doesn't do. The iPad would be missed also, but it's the same story. Microsoft though has its fingers in so many pies that if it disappears over night it would basically stop much of the planet. There are a lot of devices running Windows Mobile still. There are loads of applications in use that simply won't run on anything but Windows. Millions of people that don't have the skills to use anything but Office/Windows. Earth without Microsoft would be drastically different. Outlook/Exchange is huge also. There are masses of IT staff that would simply not know how to use anything else. Now, that's not to say that they haven't done a lot of work to take themselves out of that position. Windows 8 was, as I think everyone here would know, a train wreck. There are developers developing for the web, Android and iPhone that 5-10 years ago would have been developing applications that would only have run on Windows. I just don't think either Apple or Amazon have the irreplaceability in so many fields that MS does.

NoodleIncident 13y ago
I don't think he meant to imply such a sudden disappearance (technological rapture?). All of Microsoft's core products are generic and replaceable, and it's easy to imagine other companies making them instead.
- fphhotchips 13y ago
  But that's sort of my point too. There's nothing substantially different about an iPhone or iPad anymore. The PC/Laptop Macs are a little more substantial, but I think that's probably because of HP/Dell/Toshiba etc. commitment to mediocrity more than it is because Apple is special in any huge way. I can definitely imagine Amazon is even worse in that respect - the store is exactly that, and anyone can sell "stuff". AWS is the same, even if the barriers to entry are a little higher. Honestly, the only big tech company that I can't imagine life without is Google, simply because my Google account is so pervasive now. Perhaps Facebook, too. Even then, when you break both of those companies down, you find that none of the products are overly unique to the company. Other people do social, other people do search, other people do maps, etc. It's easy to imagine other companies making any of these things, but when you think about it "other companies" in that thought experiment start to just become another black box with a different logo slapped over the top.
enraged_camel 13y ago
Why would you think that Microsoft's overnight disappearance would cause the sudden failure of things like Outlook/Exchange? They are deployed software. Sure, they would stop being updated, but I reckon that for most organizations they would become legacy software over the years.
- fphhotchips 13y ago
  The thought experiment was that the companies went bankrupt and their products stopped working. A world without the company or its products. That probably should have been clearer, since if Amazon went bankrupt most of its products probably would go dark (unlike Apple/MS).

NoodleIncident 13y ago

I don't think he meant to imply such a sudden disappearance (technological rapture?). All of Microsoft's core products are generic and replaceable, and it's easy to imagine other companies making them instead.

fphhotchips 13y ago
But that's sort of my point too. There's nothing substantially different about an iPhone or iPad anymore. The PC/Laptop Macs are a little more substantial, but I think that's probably because of HP/Dell/Toshiba etc. commitment to mediocrity more than it is because Apple is special in any huge way. I can definitely imagine Amazon is even worse in that respect - the store is exactly that, and anyone can sell "stuff". AWS is the same, even if the barriers to entry are a little higher. Honestly, the only big tech company that I can't imagine life without is Google, simply because my Google account is so pervasive now. Perhaps Facebook, too. Even then, when you break both of those companies down, you find that none of the products are overly unique to the company. Other people do social, other people do search, other people do maps, etc. It's easy to imagine other companies making any of these things, but when you think about it "other companies" in that thought experiment start to just become another black box with a different logo slapped over the top.

enraged_camel 13y ago

Why would you think that Microsoft's overnight disappearance would cause the sudden failure of things like Outlook/Exchange? They are deployed software. Sure, they would stop being updated, but I reckon that for most organizations they would become legacy software over the years.

fphhotchips 13y ago
The thought experiment was that the companies went bankrupt and their products stopped working. A world without the company or its products. That probably should have been clearer, since if Amazon went bankrupt most of its products probably would go dark (unlike Apple/MS).