3 ms·

> Without Microsoft, we'd be in an industry ruled by hardware makers, each a mini-Apple, with their own walled-garden ecosystems that would not interoperate wit

• throwawaykf05 12y ago
  IBM actually came late to the PC (or microcomputers as they were known then) game, but the world it entered was full of walled gardens. However due to its lateness, it was forced to make architectural decisions that made future cloning easy. But you do know that the "IBM PC compatible" clones that made the PC a standard and commoditized hardware were reverse-engineered, right? As in, without IBM's approval? If IBM wanted a truly open system, people would not have had to reverse the BIOS. Microsoft's masterstroke was in foregoing exclusive licensing to IBM for lower royalties, and then making the same software available on all computers, thereby creating a standard platform that more software could be written for. The true value of a machine is in the software, and as more and more software is written, more and more value is created (which MS was perfectly positioned to capture a large chunk of), whereas hardware becomes fungible, causing hardware makers to enter a race to the bottom. This made hardware cheaper and more accessible, leading to even more software being created. I doubt any other company drove that shift as much as MS did. Certainly not IBM, which didn't even realize what was happening at the time, and if it did, it certainly would have fought its own commoditization.