My bad. I knew last week that Microsoft's 40th birthday was coming up, and then completely spaced it out over the long weekend. My brush with the company actually came fairly late in a Generation Xer's development. My trajectory was TRS-80 to Apple II, followed by a three-year hiatus, and then MS-DOS alternating with early Macintosh for a bit, finally settling on Windows 3.1 and so on up.
These days the Windows development stations don't have much to do except wait for updates and the day when one will end up doing the duty of both and the other is recycled as a home server.
But even as a Linux user, I realise that monoculture, even in operating systems, is infeasible. Particularly in my trade, which is expected to support Mac, Windows, Blackberry, Android, iOS, and various flavours of UNIX. Moreover, as both the Irish Potato Famine and the rash of script-kiddie-fueled havoc of the 2000s taught us, monoculture can be downright disastrous.
Still, it would be distinctly un-Hufflepuff of me not to acknowledge the audacious moon-shot that Bill Gates, Paul Allen, et. al. (nearly) pulled off. A computer on every desk, running DOS/Windows (depending on the decade).
It wasn't Borg-like single-mindedness, nor even plain luck. Painting with a broad brush, some of the key factors in Microsoft's ability to make three billionaires and a whopping 12K millionaires from its 1996 IPO are, IMLTHO:
The Economics of Complementary Products: Meaning that if the price of peanut butter drops, you should be able to sell more jelly as well as more peanut butter (even if the price of jelly remains stable or even rises a little). Personal computer prices were plummeting even as their capabilities followed the logarithmic trajectory of Moore's Law. That made it easier to justify spending more money on software. The trade-off would become more opaque as new PCs and laptops began shipping with pre-installed copies of DOS/Windows. And then the greater volumes spurred more efficiencies (some good, some appalling) in the electronics industry, and...well, here we are...
Apple in a Tail-spin: Jobs had been pushed out by Scully and Woz had bailed as Apple's first act was fizzling out. (If my Gentle Reader's memory of Apple before iPods and Macbooks is a little fuzzy, think Robert Downey Jr. between Ally McBeal and Ironman and you're pretty close to the mark.)
Stepping-stone Partnerships: After Microsoft adapted and optimised (or in programmer parlance, "ported") the CP/M operating systems for IBM PCs, it retained the rights to its own version of the resulting PC-DOS. As PC clones rushed into the market, the go-to operating system (MS-DOS) was no-brainer. Microsoft also collaborated with IBM on the OS/2 operating system, but DOS (and other business ventures) eventually proved too lucrative, and Microsoft dissolved the OS/2 partnership.
A Bigger Bogeyman: Strangely, there was once a time when Microsoft was an underdog. It's generally
accepted that, as the PC boom was mushrooming, IBM made superior
hardware. Alas, at a higher price-tag and with absolutely zero
intention of following anyone's standards but their own. PC-DOS and OS/2 work notwithstanding, Microsoft found itself part
of an intrepid little band that also included Intel and Lotus in the
battle for how RAM is used by programs. (And people cheered them on!)
"The Second Mouse Gets the Cheese": Because first-mover advantage is overrated. Particularly in new markets where consumers aren't sure what they're supposed to want yet. I think that fairly characterises the mid-1980s when people wanted a computer because all the cool kids had one. (As, later, they just had to have their AOL, and Facebook, and iGadgets, and...)
"Knowing Where the Bodies are Buried": Microsoft's inside knowledge of their operating system gave an insurmountable strategic advantage to developers of the Office suite of products. In other words, it's developers could take short-cuts through the operating system that companies like Lotus (of 1-2-3 fame) or Corel (WordPerfect) couldn't even know without first reverse-engineering.
Lack of Complacency: At least in the 1990s, Microsoft was highly jealous of its dominance, and targeted threats--real and imagined--with extreme prejudice. Which was reflected in Gate's now-(in)famous "Pearl Harbor Day" reaction to an entire realm of software (a.k.a. the internet) that had materialised outside the fiefdom of the desktop operating system. As many of us likely remember, shenanigans ensued. Any web developer who still has to support Internet Explorer 8 could probably make the case that we're still paying for those shenanigans today.
Embracing Hardware Diversity: It's basically the network effect, in that the value of a network is a function of the square of its number of members. Thus, the more things you can do with a computer, the more valuable it is. That encompasses hardware as well as apps. And goodness knows I've wasted enough (sometimes fruitless) time with Linux and wireless to appreciate when "it just works." Yes, there's a Microsoft Mouse, and the XBox, but overall, Microsoft has not let itself become too distracted by new hardware form-factors.
Alas, Microsoft's relationship with third-party developers, historically, has enjoyed levels of dependency and dysfunction normally not found outside Tennessee Williams' plays. Obviously, there has been a lot--and I mean a LOT--of (ahem!) "unsportsmanlike conduct" perpetrated from Redmond, WA. Let's not gloss over that, not by any means. Nope.
Worse, I'm not even referring to Steve Balmer's lizard-brained "cancer" characterisation of open-source software. Microsoft took a PR black eye after it copied a feature from Blue-J, then initiated a patent filing--even after management was aware that the work had been pilfered. In that instance, MS (wisely) backed off. But Windows developers are/were (or should be / have been) all-too-aware of the truth in the ancient Greek blessing "May the Gods stay far from your destiny." To wit: Make a Windows app. or plug-in that's too successful, and Redmond might just bundle a knock-off with the next version of Windows (or the applicable application). Which puts said developer out of business--after taking on all the risk and sweat of prototyping and marketing.
But, hey, at least that's a real product, and not mere weaponised marketing--a.k.a. vapourware. I'd hate to know how many companies or proto-companies tanked simply because someone at Microsoft whispered in the ear of Slashdot or Wired or PCWorld or what-have-you.
Yet.
And yet...
When it's all said and done, I'm not entirely convinced that my Gentle Reader and I would know each other were it not for the aforesaid moon-shot Where I used to work, we had the acronym "BHAG" (pronounced "Bee-hag") for Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals. And there is something--actually multiple and varied somethings--to be said for a company that can score a BHAG. Despite the lean, uncertain times. More importantly, despite the smug, Dom-and-Beluga fat times.
Microsoft, for its all its sins (both myriad and legion), literally changed the world. And I think that needs to be acknowledged...even by open-source partisans such as your faithful blogger.
