Lpc2000

On Thu, Mar 24, 2005 at 04:47:10PM +1030, Onestone wrote:

> Windows won the OS wars for one simple reason. The MAC was a closed 
> architecture, the PC was an open arhcitecture. Everybody and their 
> uncles was building add on cards and writing code for windows, noboday 
> could afford a licence for MAC. You could get free, or effectively free 
> software to do anything on a PC, and find hardware for just about any 
> imaginable extension, MAC software and hardware was both rare and 
> grossly overpriced.

The reason for the Windows success was DOS compatibility. You could use
Windows as task switcher for DOS applications, until this applications were
rewritten in windows. This simplified the chicken/egg problem of the new OS.
(I remember that GEM(?) was available for IBM-PC's before Windows - but GEM
had no success). And the success of DOS (or the IBM-PC) was the availability
of cheap "compatible" clones made in Taiwan. Price was the reason, simply
the money...

        Matthias