Word: dos
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...thing" is Windows 95, the latest update of a 10-year-old product that Microsoft is scheduled to release on Aug. 24. Windows 95 is Microsoft's bid to rid itself once and for all of its twin albatrosses: the legacy of dos (a primordial system that is starting to annoy even its most loyal users) and the competition from the Macintosh operating system (which continues to make Windows seem clunky by comparison...
...desperate are programmers for a stable computer standard that they will latch on to the first one that works-whether or not it is the best. A case in point, says Arthur, is ms-dos. "Microsoft dos for any serious user is a crummy operating system," he says. "But Microsoft got there first and played its market advantages extremely intelligently...
Using a strategy Arthur calls "target, leverage, link and lock," Microsoft proceeded to convert dos users to Windows users, Windows users to Word users and so on down the product line. Microsoft's customers, of course, were free to switch to WordPerfect for Windows or Lotus 1-2-3 for Windows or any other competing products. But by the time those programs were ready, Microsoft already owned the markets. "You could argue," says Arthur, "that Microsoft is the product of clever strategy, mediocre technology and a hell of a lot of increasing returns...
...make my proposal selflessly, objectively, recognizing that from a programming standpoint, Windows isn't exactly poetry. It's counterintuitive and clunky, which is peculiar after all these years. Microsoft, you'll recall, came into being when Gates licensed to IBM his Disk Operating System, or DOS, which was supposed to make PCs easier to use. Later, Windows was supposed to make DOS easier to use. And a few months ago, Microsoft unleashed something called Bob, a program that's supposed to make Windows easier to use. Until a Bob helper is born, you can look forward to reading -- I swear...
...Crime Task Force at the house and at a nearby printshop turned up the largest cache of illegal software ever discovered in the U.S., worth nearly $13 million at retail prices. By week's end investigators were still tallying the haul -- all Microsoft products, including the operating system called DOS 6.2 as well as the helper programs Windows and Windows for Workgroups. In March a similar raid in the same neighborhood unearthed about $4.7 million worth of phony software plus a supply of automatic weapons, 3 lbs. of TNT and 6 lbs. of C4 plastic explosive...