I never said that Microsoft programmed those drivers; I said that virtually any hardware combination will run Windows. I compare the difference in Windows vs. Mac to the difference between Beta and VHS. Sony develops both technologies. It sees that the BetaMAX video recording system is superior to VHS. I licenses the inferior version to anyone who wants it, and keeps the superior one for itself. Fastforward (no pun intended) 5 years and Beta doesn't exist, while VHS is the defacto standard.
How does this compare to Apple and Microsoft? As far as I recall, Apple had very strict guidelines as to what hardware was allowed in their systems, especially early on. Even though the mac operating system was superior, microsoft took a different approach and allowed anyone and everyone to design drivers for the DOS and windows systems. By trying to protect their sacrosanct Macintosh, apple made a major marketing blunder. Even though it was (and probably still is) a superior system to anything released by Microsoft, the mere fact that they
made this blunder sealed the fate of Apple.
To quote from the article:
The most fascinating thing about the whole story is that Bill Gates
wanted Apple to dominate the market place! In 1985,
he told the Apple executives that "Apple must open the Macintosh architecture to have the independent support required to gain momentum and establish a standard." According to that article, Gates was, at the time, producing the popular Microsoft Excel, and it was his biggest and most profitable product. Since it was selling on the Mac, he wanted Apple to dominate the market so he could make more money.
But that's the whole point! Apple wouldn't allow clones like Sony wouldn't allow cloned Beta machines, so they lost out on dominating the marketplace.
This was true 5 years ago. Now, although it's not perfect, many big manufacturers (ie NVIDIA, ATI, etc) do support Linux. Until Linux is user-friendly enough for the average user, it's not going to be big enough to warrant a manufacturers investment in the time it takes to develop native drivers. Even HP
indirectly supports linux!
I did exactly that, less than two years ago. I installed Mandrake, got it up and running, but it had no support for my network card (the then new NV400 chipset). Without a network card I couldn't get on the internet; without the internet I couldn't fix the problem. Creative soundcards were also a big problem, as was my video card, scanner, and joystick (not that it was actually needed for linux
). But, once I got that all working, it ran pretty good. Of course, with the exception of my scanner, everything ran natively on my XP installation without having to access the internet.
Look, I'm not "rah-rah"ing Microsoft here; they have some pretty big disadvantages compared to Mac and Linux. What I am doing is pointing out why they are more popular than the alternatives.
My impression is that Windows runs best on new hardware; Linux runs best on older hardware (not ancient, but not the newest out there). Apple runs on Apple hardware ;-). There. Done and done!
