I believe it's incompetent competition from a business standpoint and not necessarily a technical one... until word 2000 and windows xp ... windows apps were awful (i was a full force wordperfect advocate until word 2000) including their so-called operating system....

The competition didn't realize that people do not care too much about realibility (or least they do now that they don't) - they wanted things to at least appear simple to use... and well the competition missed the boat on that one... (and the apple stigma of being different as well as the price issues will keep it in a niche league for some time)

regardless how much people hate M$ ... they never forced you give them money - so they did enough right to make billions over the years

If anyone one else has tried to walk their mom / family member through how to send email, play games, or surf the web, they will understand how "ease of use" has been the most important part of computer use.

And I think that the "ease of use" thing also goes toward what everyone else is using... the blind can lead the blind when they are all using the same sw.

Didn't read the article, but in my opinion, the greater majority of software is not easy to use, and is not intuitive to non-technical people. I have tried teaching my mom to use the "Internet" and it has proven a challenge due to the fact that to her, it is a tool.

However, she has to remember many steps before actually starting to utilize this tool. Then after that, the online banking interface is just too busy for her. She just thinks she can't handle it and gives up. It's too busy.

Hmm, I should explain what I mean more in depth. I'm not talking about technically, although that certainly played a part.

Do you remember how Gates got DOS? He didn't want the operating system business. He wanted the tools business. He thought there was more money in that.

So, he sent IBM down to DRI Research to get the OS there. They screwed it up. IBM went back to Gates and said "DRI Research didn't deal so we still need an OS." Gates didn't let that slide a second time. He bought DOS from a guy named Tim Patterson at a Seattle computer store for about $65,000. The rest is history.

Incompetent competitors. Microsoft has had more than its fair share. I'll enumerate more, if you want, but why? Especially when folks think there were technically superior products out there. There weren't. Oh, I guess you think Beta is technically superior to VHS too, right? Guess what, it wasn't -- at least not in the area that people cared about, which was tape length.

Scoble, wrong -- Microsoft lost the antitrust trial, and one of the great things about that is that we don't have to have this argument with Microsoft people anymore. If what you say is true, there wouldn't have been any need for Microsoft to cut off Netscape's air supply. For all we know it was true, but MS wouldn't let it play out. Maybe next time they will. But as long as you guys believe this line, I guess there's not much hope.

Uh Robert is hardly insisting that the *only* reason Microsoft is where it is now is because of incompetent competitors. But reaction like the above (from someone unable to code CSS propely :p ) shows that the way competitors made mistakes is worth remembering. Or is it big bad Microsoft's fault that Apple chose not to licence the Mac OS in the late 80s? Or Sun getting caught due to ignoring for too long what cheaper and more capable PC hardware and free software would do to their proprietary hardware and software sales?

M$ has got in their position by smart marketing and more or less illegal methods. There are plenty of examples; Java/Netscape/Media Player etc...