On Sat, 23 May 1998, Barnet Wagman wrote:
>
>
> It's certainly true that the pc-xt was technically obsolete the day it
>
> Gate's initial luck (if that's what it was), was in getting IBM to acquiese
> to a deal that was incredibly favorable to Microsoft. I suspect that IBM
> simply didn't appreciate the implications of the deal (I believe I once
> read an account of IBM management's hindsight regret over this deal.)
>
> There's probably a lot of 'path dependence' (if you'll forgive the jargon) at
> work in Microsoft's ascension. While Gates may be the master of
> monopolizing contracts, it's important to remember that there are
> enormous economies to standardization in software and immense
And I would argue that, given his background, Gates was in a far better position to grasp these realities than any of his colleagues.
Re MacIntosh; One reason I do not mourn Apple, despite my preference for the system is that the company had the opportunity, I believe, in the late 1980s to slash prices and become the "Volks" Computer (or 1960s Dodge Dart if you prefer) but elected to keep high profit margins an elite image, and offered the consumer a dizzying plethora of overlapping products in place of lower prices. The same phenomenon happened up here in the NW corner with microbrews, and now beers like Redhook are finally cutting prices, after the horse has bolted, of course.