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Original post by LilBudyWizer
Microsoft is in a unique position to declare anything they do a standard, say they are the first to support the standard and have people accept those statements at face value. With anyone else that would be called proprietary. If you said you were the first to support a standard everyone would point out that you were the only one to support it and as such it wasn''t really a standard. That is what Microsoft owes half it''s success to. The other half is recognizing that all people see is the pretty little interface. Personally I feel Microsoft does best at identifying and implementing other people''s good ideas. The IDE you see, though distinct from, is due to Borland and others that had GUI IDEs while Microsoft was still just supplying a command line compiler. It is also worth noting that at that time they didn''t even use their own product for internal development yet they still managed even then to have the majority of the market share.
That ability to sell a product based upon a name rather than quality gives them a critical mass. That steady stream of income allows them to put more and more into a product while their competetitors are starved for cash. I would certainly hope that they eventually develope a better product. Regardless of what I think if Microsoft and Bill Gates as a software company I will grant that they are one of the most ruthless and effecient businesses in the world. They do leverage the boon of their name into eventually producing an excellant product. The degree to which they suck at innovation and how totally they dominate markets worries me as to what happens when the business environment no longer demands of them to produce a better product. If they have no competitors then what incentive do they have to improve a product rather than milk it for profits.
You should never forget that if you write any software then you are a competitor to Microsoft. Throughout the appelate hearings on Microsoft they called their standards open because they LET you write programs for their system. They tolerate you because they have yet to displace you, i.e. the time is not right. I am rather curious what will happen to DirectX once the XBox is out. Will the DirectX API allow you to develope games that are equal or better than the XBox five years from now? If they make a royality on every XBox game and nothing on a DirectX game then what do you really think that answer will be? Do you think they are producing an XBox because they want to enter the game console market and sell hardware or because they view it as a means to dominate a multi-billion dollar software market? Give them five years, ten at the most and you will either be their partner in game development or you will be out of business. It is the continual march of the lemmings that will make that possible for them. It isn''t the quality of their product, but rather the stupidity of their competitors who also happen to be their customers. Give them a critical mass and they no longer need you. If you were them would you sell your customer a product that made it easy for them to compete effectively with you? Keep their competitors alive and you don''t have to worry what happens to you as a developer when there is only one place to buy your development tools. OpenGL will drive them to improve DirectX, Borland and Watcom will drive them to improve Visual Studio. Don''t look at disdain at their competition because you can thank their competition for everything you see in their products.
That was one of the most articulate explanations of Miscrosoft''s business. It is completely true.
If you think IE is the best, remember it wouldn''t even exist except for innovation from other companies. You think Direct3D is really good now? Remember, OpenGL''s originally better API drove Direct3D to be what it is today. You think the Windows GUI is really good now? Innovation at Apple and even Xerox began the GUI trend. You think Microsoft now has a robust OS for network serving? Unix was there first. You think MIcrosoft''s SQL servers are the industry standard? IBM invented SQL and Oracle became the leader with SQL database software.
Just what has Microsoft truly innovated themselves? Actually, they were the first to really make Plug ''n Play a workable thing. And this was not without a lot of marketing musle and coercion thrown towards the direction of the hardware vendors. In fact, that''s all it really was.
Oh, I''m sorry! This was a post about Microsoft''s compiler IDE. Yeah, it''s okay, I guess.
