[Coco][Color Computer] Anyone following the latest Microsoftand Linux debacles?

[Ward Griffiths]

On Friday 14 January 2005 08:07 pm, James the Animal Tamer wrote:
> Funny.  IBM didn't want the MS name on its OS, so its version was
> named PC-DOS.  Later, IBM came out with OS/2 and OS/2 2.0.  In short,
> I don't blame IBM for nor credit IBM with Microsoft's success with
> Windows.

Actually, hard as it is to admit, Tandy Corporation was Microsoft's 
biggest customer before the renaming of QDOS to PC-DOS (and MS-DOS).

And the triumph of Windoze is due to a little program called VisiCalc.

When VisiCalc first showed up, it ran only on the Apple ][.  But that 
program caused a whole bunch of accountants and other 
numerically-inclined folks to buy that machine.  A year or so later it 
was available for the TRS-80 line, but by then the damage was done.

Apple ][ machines hadn't been selling worth a damn until VisiCalc.  That 
one program kept Apple afloat long enough for Jobs to see the demo at 
PARC and come up with the Lisa (and later, the Mac).

If Apple had gone tits up on schedule, there would never have been the 
competitive pressure to do GUI stuff so fast and furious.  Yes, there'd 
be GUIs by now.  But things might not have quite so pushy.

I still run one MS OS at home.  TRS-Xenix.  No others need apply.  (I 
don't run any Macs either).
-- 
Ward Griffiths				wdg3rd at comcast.net

Consider urinals and the Army.  They were never a problem, because men
regard the entire earth as a urinal in waiting.  The side of the road,
the middle of the road, a tree, the ocean -- they don't discriminate.
The way feminists see oppression everywhere, men see urinals.  It's a
design feature.			-- Fred Reed, www.fredoneverything.net





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