Would it be a good thing if Microsoft disappeared ?

Would it be a good thing if Microsoft disappeared ?

  • Yes

  • No

  • Don't know

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toast

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Gone !
I'd like to know if my opinion is shared or not:

As a programmer, I think that it would be a great thing if a giant meteor could just cross Microsoft® out of the map.
As a designer, I appreciate (for business reasons) the existence of a standard, the Word file.

So I think Microsoft should and should not disappear. Your ideas ?

PS: there is no will to offend anyone in my question.
 
It would open up the game again, and I'd like that. Of course the American economy would go down (or so they tell us), but that wouldn't be THAT bad for the world either. So, yes, let 'em go down if you can.
 
hypothetically speaking:

If microsoft ceased to exist, wouldn't it be possible for Apple to turn into microsoft (*gasp*)? that would be a bad thing. I say If M$'s main HQs were wiped out it might not be too bad, then they would exist, but less.
 
i don t think apple would become microsoft, the philosophies of the company are just to different. but it is possible

i think the existence of the word format is bad for business. it ties businesses to one platform, it limits their flexibility. it forces businesses to upgrade when it might otherwise be unnecessary, just so they can read the latest word files.

i am in favor of microsoft disappearing
 
If MS disappeared, somebody else would just take their place.

Whether it be Apple, AOL or maybe even IBM and Linux, who's to say.

I think to a degree it's good that MS exists. It creates competition and forces others to strive harder. Unfortunately, due to anti-competitive practices, MS hasn't allowed for much competition in recent years.

I hope to see our legal system stop pussyfooting around MS though and come down on them like they have other monopolies before them.

A browser seems like a trivial thing, but we're all here typing through one and because of that, it significantly shifted the market in Microsoft's favor.

Nobody can stay on top forever, and it'll only be time before MS is replaced by another.

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, so anyone who is strong enough to take Microsoft's place will likely find themselves in the same boat, hellbent on world domination.

As for the the Word file format, I think there should be an open standard for computer documents. This would aleviate the headache of trying to work between different platforms and lessen Microsoft's stronghold in the professional, consumer and education markets as well. This should be something the 9 states are fighting for, not just the removal of IE and WMP.
 
I would think that if microsoft ceased to exist, there are 3 scenarios
1) lots of standards, incompatibility
2) lots of OPEN standards, compatibility
3) Another company takes M$'s place


In case 1, really bad. Imagine having apple, SGI, sun, Amiga, linux, and all the other OSes taking over and equally splitting up the M$ market. Incompatibility left and right and lots of headaches for us IT people.

In case 2 --- HEAVEN! People will use what they want to use, and lets say I make a .doc file on my mac, my friend on a SUN machine can read and edit it, who can in turn send it to our person X and me, and who might use it on an amiga, and we can still use that document!

PLUS in cases 1 and 2, less viruses, right now its easy to cause lots of probs in the world cause people use the same platform, windex, however if a virus is written, it couldnt really be effective unless the programmer used java or a "write once run everywhere" langauge :p

in case three we are back in square one.
 
Nah, a meteor is much too quick of a death and not nearly painful enough. ;)
But if Microsoft did just up and disappear I think it would be awesome for computing and for world economies. At first everyone would probably panic, but people do that all the time anyway. After the initial screams, stampedes and such died down people would realize that they could still get a hold of copies of Windows 2000 and Windows XP and that those two should be plenty good for at least another couple years.

People buying new computers would start migrating en masse to Mac's, but not all of them because there are an awful lot of Intel boxes out there that wouldn't just go away, and Intel/AMD would still be around to make new processors. So, in the next couple years the Linux community would kick it into high gear to give the world some decently-user-friendly software to run on Intel boxes. This would result in massive investment and development in the technology sector.

Apple might decide to port OS X to Intel but Linux would have the jump on them. Lindows would too, and would skyrocket since it can already run MS Office and other Windows software alongside Linux programs.

By the time Windows XP and 2000 were too out-of-date to use, there would be other, better alternatives and a whole lot more Mac users. Compatibility, especially backwards compatibility, would be a prime focus for everybody (to make it easier for people to switch over) and since Apple would have a larger market share it would wield more power and many more programs would be multi-platform and more formats would be platform independent.

Competition between operating system makers would rise to a level not seen for a long time, and we all know what healthy, cutthroat competition can do for innovation. World peace would soon follow, and Microsoft would be safely cast into, well, wherever old operating systems go when they die.

The only down-side to the whole gig would be that we would be robbed of the opportunity to look MS users in the eyes and say "See! We told you we'd win!" because, though we'd have won, it wouldn't have been a fair fight. I am, however, willing to live with that. So if any paranormal or extraterrestrial forces are wondering what I think of dropping a big one on Redmond, I'd like to give them a big, hearty, green light.
 
In case 1, really bad. Imagine having apple, SGI, sun, Amiga, linux, and all the other OSes taking over and equally splitting up the M$ market. Incompatibility left and right and lots of headaches for us IT people.
Click to expand...

While it sounds good in theory, none of those companies would be content sharing equal pieces of a pie. We can pretend all we want, but every major corporation, even Apple, is hellbent on world domination.

In case 1, really bad. Imagine having apple, SGI, sun, Amiga, linux, and all the other OSes taking over and equally splitting up the M$ market. Incompatibility left and right and lots of headaches for us IT people.
Click to expand...

This senario is much more likely. With MS gone, there would be little holding anyone back from creating an open standard document file format. Right now, everyone is just trying to reverse engineer MS to become somewhat compatible with *.doc.

PLUS in cases 1 and 2, less viruses, right now its easy to cause lots of probs in the world cause people use the same platform, windex, however if a virus is written, it couldnt really be effective unless the programmer used java or a "write once run everywhere" langauge
Click to expand...

This is kind of a misconception. When you control 95% of the desktop market and 60% of the server market, who do you think a*sholes are going to try and exploit? BeOS? If MS was gone these idiots would just find the next dominant platform to attack. Unix was plagued with worms and exploits way before MS was ever thought of. Also, I run Linux, I get my list of packages to update weekly due to security holes and buffer underruns. I certainly don't see how that's any different than the patches in Windows Update.
 
I think that apple would become larger. but then i would hope that everything would become compadable with Linux Apple Sun Micro and the whole bunch, that would be the day when there would no longer be war between anyone.....ok maybe not the war thing but it would end a lot of headaches:rolleyes:
 
Originally posted by lethe
i don t think apple would become microsoft, the philosophies of the company are just to different.
Click to expand...

Yeah right. That evil business men, the "suits" at Apple would LOVE to be like M$. Everyone is there to make money right? Most people are anyway. Those greedy S.O.Bs
 
Think about it this way: If Microsoft, Apple's largest competitor, were to dissappear, Apple would not have to work so hard to please it's current customers and impress it's possible-customers. I know we'd all like to think that Uncle Steve would take care of us the same way, but a business is a business and Apple's quality-per-computer would go down in order to fill in for the PC world.
 
There would still be 95% with a PC that couldn't run Mac software. Linux would rule those computers, soon. Macs would still have to compete with 'Wintel' hardware, which is still cheaper. Linux would gain drivers for the hardware *instantly*, because the hardware companies must sell their stuff, too. The Mac would, I'd say, gain market share more easily, but it'd certainly NOT be the sole and clear successor.
 
If Apple were to port OS X to Intel, they would be years ahead of what any Linux distribution has to offer. Their market share would triple within the first week of release. Apple is far more familiar to Joe Average Consumer than Linux and it's many different faces, KDE, Gnome, Enlightenment, WindowMaker, etc.

Then of course they would create their own Office suite and web browser and become the "Microsoft" of the new millennium.
 
Originally posted by azosx

Then of course they would create their own Office suite and web browser and become the "Microsoft" of the new millennium.
Click to expand...

Funny thing is the we on this board seem to love the thought of an Apple browser and Apple Office...
 
It would be a very good thing is M$ disappeared. M$ makes one decent product - Office, nothing else is worth saving. It's monopoly is hurting corporate America. And the economy would not go down if M$ went down. M$ claims that the breakup of M$ would hurt the US economy, nothing could be further from the truth. I don't think one company would replace M$, but a few others would get larger (more market share) and fill-in the hole. Apple would grow a little, Red Hat would grow some more, AOL might grow the most.

With regard to file standards, M$ does have a monopoly on that. What I think will eventually happen is that we will see a universal open standard file format that will incorporate text, images, mathematical expressions / equations, and sound into a single format that all programs will be able to handle. In short, it would be like combining HTML and PDF, and possibly Word and Excel-type formats. The file format would be cross platform. There is no need for a word processor to have a different file format from a web page, they both do the same things now. Most good web design software looks like a high-end word processor anyway. And it all deals with putting your ideas in print - publishing.


I think that Linux has the best chance of overtaking M$ for 3 reasons:

1. M$ security and licensing agreements are problematic. Virii spread rather quickly through M$ operating systems and programs. There simply are too many security holes. I don't know if hackers are fortuitously or unfortuitously, depending on how you look at it, taking advantage of possible M$ "features" / spying pathways in M$ software. M$ seems to be playing catch-up to plug the holes and create new paths for software monitoring. The recent update for M$ Windows Media Player gives M$ Digital Rights Management. If you AGREE, you give M$ the ability to remove and or disable software from your computer that prevents DRM.

2. Linux is a more stable platform than Windows, it doesn't crash as much, and it is getting more user friendly with regard to installation and plug-n-play. With the United Linux standard, it will be easier for businesses to install software on different distributions without surprises and hacking. It is also cheaper to install on a generic PC. Walmart nows sells a PC on their website for about $400 to $500 that you put together yourself and install Linux.

3. Cost & Control. M$ is expensive and it exerts too much control over the user. The operating system and programs simply cost too much. Whoever said a Macintosh costs more than a PC needsto look at TOTAL cost, not just the upfront cost of hardware, but software, support, trouble shooting, etc... Too much third party software is "broken" by M$ software. I think Kodak had issues with M$ with regard to some photo editing software a while back. You would tell the OS that you want these images to be associated with Kodak's programs, but double clicking on the file brings up M$'s photo editor.

The foundations of UNIX, BSD, Linux, etc... are well established and have been a part of the academic world for a long time. It works, and it works very well. This is where I think the next big software explosion id going to be, simply because it works so well and is open standard.
 
Apple can't just port OS X over to Intel and say that's that. They still would have TONS of driver issues to go through and it may end up being more of a mess than Linux would have.
 
I think you'd be surprised how easy it would actually be to port OS X to Intel. Rhapsody, an early version of OS X, actually did run on the Intel. You could actually run OS 9 apps through it on Intel as well. That's the beauty of Unix, power and portablility.

If Apple was to port OS X to Intel, it would no longer be completely their responsibility to create driver compatibility, since most of the hardware would no longer be theirs.

Since they would essentially be the only game in town if MS was gone, I say this because their desktop market share is 10x greater than Linux, hardware companies would be much more willing to work with Apple in making their products compatible.

Apple is also a lot more unified than the dozens of different Linux distributions. The could hammer out compatibility and driver issues a lot more quickly.

The transition wouldn't happen over night but gradually within a few years.

Microsoft ported NT and 2000 to Alpha and SPARC hardware, and Sun ported Solaris to Intel so it's obviously not impossible.
 
As I write this I look at the poll: it's about 60/40…

What is true, it seems, is that there MUST be a Microsoft company. Whatever the name. #And what is true is also that we all LIKE to HATE it ! ;)#
 
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