8 ms·

I think it is like most software, especially in the OS space. The technology doesn't have to be the best, it just needs to get lucky enough to become a standard

I think it is like most software, especially in the OS space. The technology doesn't have to be the best, it just needs to get lucky enough to become a standard and build a moat with that. And by the mid 80's the moats were already very deep. Amiga couldn't over come the PC. IBM couldn't over come the moat of Windows with OS2. Intel couldn't overcome x86 with the i432 or Itanium. Luck and market forces from said luck played a huge part in determining who won.

specproc 27d ago
> The report stated that the US had concerns about Japanese government market intervention to support the TRON OS and identified two specific markets where TRON was receiving government advantage. The US government is one hell of a moat.
- childintime 27d ago
  The financial center of the world selects its winners nearby. As simple as that. Businesses outside of the US have never had much of a chance. China does the same now, as the engineering center of the world. And they have to because the financial center is hyping them as a threat.
  - bulbar 27d ago
    A dictatorship with the explicit goal of invading Taiwan, which is not only a close ally, but also of global geostrategic importance. That's not "hype".
    - otabdeveloper4 27d ago
      You're confusing "ally" and "vassal". Allies are countries that send troops to help you in war.
      - tremon 27d ago
        Whereas vassals are countries that you draft to help you in war?
        mr_toad 27d ago
        Yes, by definition, a vassal owes allegiance to their lord, which includes military service. But you can’t really take a feudal term and apply it to modern politics. Taiwan doesn’t resemble a vassal in any meaningful way.
        Calazon 26d ago
        I think the idea is that a vassal state (operates as though it) owes allegiance to a stronger state, while governing itself (more or less) independently. And the stronger state exercises a lot of influence on the weaker state, especially in terms of foreign policy, and potentially provides it with protection from other strong states. Not sure exactly how much this would apply to Taiwan in particular, but I think the idea in general can be meaningful in modern politics.
      - specproc 27d ago
        So many dead lads from both my countries fighting American wars, for zero gain to our peoples. That's vassalship, not an alliance.
      - deleted 27d ago
        [deleted]
      - OroPla 27d ago
        Allies will only help you if you are winning the war. Vassals will also help if you are losing.
      - Calazon 26d ago
        There's certainly a spectrum between allies, vassals, and directly controlled territories, but it doesn't necessarily need to be about sending troops to help in war.
    - roenxi 27d ago
      On the other hand, we can't tell if the US has a goal or not in the middle east or if destabilising countries is the geostrategy unto itself. People really need to dial down the hype, engage with the real world where large countries get to have a sphere of influence and start talking realistically about what behaviour is tolerable. I still haven't heard anyone make a case for why we keep hitting the Russians given what acceptable US foreign policy looks like. One of the two is worse and it isn't the policies written in Cyrillic.
      - pjc50 27d ago
        > why we keep hitting the Russians 1) "we" (the US) are not hitting the Russians, "we" (Europe including the UK) are providing them with weapons for their self-defence, since it is in our interest to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe happening on the Polish border. I am no longer clear what, if any, assistance the US is providing. It is also very important in this that no NATO or EU forces are engaged directly with Russian forces yet, despite persistent incursions into EU airspace and occasional sabotage operations in Western Europe. The UK is developing special US ITAR-free missiles for this purpose: https://www.thedefensenews.com/UK-Develops-Three-Low-Cost-Long-Range-Cruise-Missile-Prototypes-for-Ukraine-Under-Project-Brakestop/ https://www.thedefensenews.com/UK-Develops-Three-Low-Cost-Lo... 2) "start talking realistically about what behaviour is tolerable": I think we're past the point of pretending that international law applies evenly, and back to Mao's "power comes out of the barrel of a gun". If we go back to a Cold War multipolar world between China, the US, Europe, and Russia, the only one of those which hasn't made public statements threatening European territorial integrity is China. (at this point I would expect India to start asking whether they get to be a world power or not and what they're going to do with that, too)
        roenxi 27d ago
        > since it is in our interest to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe happening on the Polish border. If your argument is preventing trouble on the Polish border, why is the strategy dumping billions and billions of dollars in weapons into the most corrupt country in Europe, who happens to be on the Polish border? Keeping a conflict worthy of WWII smouldering in the area for more than 4 years now? The sensible thing to do would have been to encourage a Ukrainian surrender early on and send them some food/whatnot in a care package, then fortify the Polish border. This strategy actually employed seems like the most direct way to trigger a humanitarian catastrophe on the Polish border. It looks very destabilising. It is also one of the very few paths that could reasonably see Poland or countries in that general region getting nuked. Can we please be honest about our motivations here? We're all more likely to get what we want. Ideally peace and prosperity.
    - chabska 27d ago
      Democracy is when you drop a ballot every two/four years, and the elected officers ignore you while they take millions of donation from wealthy donors. Dictatorship is when the unelected representatives work their ass off to better the lives of the average citizens, because they're afraid of a revolution. (P.S.: Xi Jin Ping is as unelected as the British Prime Minister, but I don't see people calling the UK a dictatorship.)
      - Nursie 27d ago
        > Xi Jin Ping is as unelected as the British Prime Minister The British PM was elected, what on earth are you talking about? He won an election to his seat in Parliament just a few weeks ago.
        implements 27d ago
        “Has no personal mandate from the entire electorate” - I suspect they mean. But that’s not necessary or expected under the British system, being an MP and Party Leader is enough. If Burnham radically departed from Labour’s manifesto you could then argue he call a general election to establish legitimacy for that, but it isn’t required.
        chabska 26d ago
        He was not elected by the general public to the position of Prime Minister. He was elected, by a small number of UK citizens in his constituency, to the Parliament seat. British law doesn't even require the Prime Minister to be an MP, technically Parliament could elect any random bozo from the street to be PM.
      - pjc50 27d ago
        The UK PM change happened indirectly as a result of poor performance in the local elections. It does actually matter that the UK has multiple parties that effectively compete, even if some of them are blatantly sockpuppets for overseas millionaires.
      - Lio 27d ago
        That's because in the time since Xi took over China there's been 7 different UK Prime Ministers, most of whom were kicked out of office before their term ended. In that same period Xi has changed the rules so that he can hold on to power indefinitely.
    - ben_w 27d ago
      > A dictatorship with the explicit goal of invading Taiwan, which is not only a close ally, but also of global geostrategic importance. I think it's a safe bet that China will invade precisely when they think this won't cause them severe negative losses. This will likely be when Taiwan finds itself no longer a close ally of the USA, nor of global geostrategic importance. Of course, "safe bet" doesn't mean "in all possible timelines"; they may end up echoing the Bay of Pigs, Hormuz, or stumble against the hubris that turned the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand into a world war where all belligerents had the mistaken belief they would win.
    - juusto 27d ago
      The "dicatorship" of China never implemented such a thing in my country. USA "democracy" did.
    - kshri24 27d ago
      I don't like China for how it is behaving with my country but it is rich to talk about "invasions" when all the invading in the past half a century has been done by a Sole Democratic Superpower and its lackeys. Cannot believe I am having to defend China here but here we are!
      - Paradigma11 27d ago
        [dead]
  - expedition32 27d ago
    [flagged]
  - conductr 27d ago
    It’s also just less risky and easier to work with people that you are near, speak your language, etc. more so back in the 80s before most people were even using email, we Americans had virtually no contact with people on other continents even was limited in the business world.
    - childintime 27d ago
      I wholeheartedly agree. Even China integrated. It's not where the rift comes from.
krige 27d ago
> Amiga couldn't over come the PC. For reasons that had nothing to do with OS. Swap Steve Jobs with Irving Gould and Apple would be dead in under a decade too.
- kalleboo 27d ago
  Tramiel left Commodore in 1984 after battling Gould and Jobs left Apple in 1985 after battling Sculley. Apple then went on to have terrible management for over a decade, with people like Michael Spindler trying their best to run the company into the ground. Apple only survived as long as they did since they had really fat margins on their machines so e.g. the Apple II could subsidize the Macintosh for years. Commodore's focus on low cost made it a lot more difficult for them to e.g. fund the evolution of the Amiga properly.
tonyhart7 27d ago
apparently China decision to ban US tech company and build their own counterpart is seen as Genius after 20 years
- alansaber 27d ago
  Certain fundamental technologies are national security. If you proport to be a superpower you can't have your nation be fully reliant on say the Mac OS. Same with agricultural imports, IC development, dot dot dot
- arkh 27d ago
  One of the advantages of an autocracy: you don't need people's approval every 5 years so you can plan for decades. When you're right it is awesome. When you're wrong, well that's what the army is for.
  - tonyhart7 27d ago
    You can badmouth about China all you want but at least they are consistent where they stand while US flip flopping about invading middle east (like usual) or Greenland
    - hvb2 27d ago
      I don't think he was badmouthing China at all. He's basically using different words to make the exact same point you're trying to make. When there's no real accountability, in a reasonable timeframe, it's much easier to plan long term. It's the same within companies. When the CEO assumes he'll be around for 5 years, should he shoot for the 10 year goal and reduce outcomes in the early years? Or does he just optimize for the next 5 years, thereby neglecting the long term goal?
      - tonyhart7 27d ago
        "When you're wrong, well that's what the army is for." he is implying that China bad action can be solved by PL red Army
close04 27d ago
> it just needs to get lucky enough to To not compete with something from a country which sees its interests threatened and has the power to squeeze you dry. The US intervention to apply pressure handed a weapon to an internal player, Masayoshi Son who just happened to make money selling US software. He used that weapon against his and US' competition. It's a playbook that the US used again and again when it saw its interests threatened by competition: hit the enemy hard below the belt while handing weapons to another internal player who will also hit the enemy below the belt. Every other example you gave came from inside the US, even from the same company with multiple products. The market played the defining role there and pushed for survival of the fittest. In TRON's case "market forces" turned out to be US intervention.
Aperocky 27d ago
Is it luck or bold product and marketing decision? Being first could be luck, or it can be foresight.
shevy-java 27d ago
> The technology doesn't have to be the best, it just needs to get lucky enough to become a standard and build a moat with that. I don't know about that. Top 500 supercomputers running Linux. I use both Linux and Win10, for instance (won't switch to Win11 no matter what), but whenever I have to use Windows, I wonder how this garbage could ever become so dominating in the first place. Inefficiency is very clearly a work culture at Microsoft; I notice this every time I copy data. And then wingers for Windows babble about how Microsoft does so much more behind the scenes - all of which is totally pointless. It is such an utter trash operating system, so I can not agree with "it it is ok to suck" statements. I much prefer solid engineering at all times.
- jdw64 27d ago
  But the idea that Windows is a "better OS" really seems accurate for people in the Third World. This is because Korean language support on Linux is terrible, and since all the commands are in English, it takes quite a bit of time to get used to it. Not only that, but there are so many distributions that you do not even know what to configure, and rather than doing RTFM, I just want to get my "work" done. In that regard, I honestly think Linux is better once you master it, but realistically, Windows is much more casual and practical. You might disagree, but for people outside the Anglosphere, Windows is far more casual. To be completely honest, the vast majority of people do not even like looking at PowerShell or terminal windows. It is familiar to programmers like us, but honestly, I do not like looking at terminal windows either. I would much rather look at an IDE. In the English speaking Linux world, you just map ASCII, but we need things like ibus or fcitx. On top of that, there have been CJK input method fragmentation and conflict issues for over 20 years. I think this gap exists because they cannot understand a situation where you have to debug an "input method config file" just because you want to type some text. Windows is a black box platform where multilingual rendering and the Office ecosystem are perfectly integrated. Only a very small fraction of its API is exposed. However, for the vast majority of applications, that is more than enough. The idea that Linux is great applies mostly to English speaking developers or those who want to fit into that English speaking development culture, but from a pure usability standpoint, I believe Windows is better. Linux is technically a glass box, but honestly, no one can understand every single part of it, meaning it practically functions as a cognitive black box anyway. Furthermore, Windows supports true plug and play where hardware just works the moment you connect it. Linux does not. Debating whether Linux or Windows is technically superior is meaningless, but I absolutely do not agree with the claim that Windows is terrible. Many Americans argue that Linux is better once you learn how to use it properly, but the moment you step outside the US, Linux becomes a flawed system where nothing works as it should.
bell-cot 27d ago
I don't know Amiga well, but IBM's OS/2 efforts were plagued by several Big Blue Blunders. And both the i432 and Itanium were sounded-great ideas - for which Intel could not ship even expensive and mediocre-performance hardware in any reasonable time.
ghaff 27d ago
I was (and am again) an IT industry analyst for quite a few years. At the risk of stereotyping (and realizing they didn't have a corner on this approach), Japan long liked marching to their own drummer with designs that were out of the mainstream to a greater or lesser degree.western
decide1000 27d ago
I wouldn't describe it as luck, it's politics. The mother of Bill Gates had access to the board of IBM. She was also the co-founder of Microsoft.
moregrist 27d ago
> And by the mid 80's the moats were already very deep. You raise some good points, but I don’t think the idea of moats from the 80s really holds up. None of the obvious moats in the mid-80s are still dominant players. In the mid-80s the PC market was still pretty new. Business was still run on IBM mainframes, DEC VAX, and other systems that were overtaken by forces in the late-80s and early 90s. These seemed unstoppable until they weren’t. I think the strongest counter example, though, is probably Linux. If your thesis was correct, an early-90s hobby operating system by some kid at a uni in Finland would never be dominant in cloud server spaces by the 2000s. > Amiga couldn't over come the PC. This is probably your best example. I would add BeOS to this. On the other hand, Apple managed to attract a core audience and stay alive (even if barely) through the 90s. Sometimes you don’t have to overtake; you just need to have a solid niche. > IBM couldn't over come the moat of Windows with OS2. OS/2 originally lost to Windows as a successor to DOS due to execution, not because Windows had a huge moat. OS/2 Warp was a bit later. The story of OS/2 failing is sad and as much about IBM internal politics as about Microsoft succeeding. > Intel couldn't overcome x86 with the i432 or Itanium. Intel bet on compilers being far smarter than they were in the 2000s (and possibly today) and didn’t seem to understand that most business applications at the time were limited by branching and integer computations. That stuff doesn’t vectorize well. The arch might be better-received today, although moving pipeline concerns to the compiler still seems like a bad choice to me. As a counterpoint, consider the rise of ARM in the 2010s. An arch known mostly in the embedded world has become a real player in the desktop and server environment. All because of the rise of phones, reasonable licensing, and better perf/watt at low power than x86.
- rbanffy 25d ago
  > Intel bet on compilers being far smarter than they were in the 2000s Funny Intel didn’t just fell for this once, but twice. I wonder what was Microsoft’s role on Itanium’s failure - it would be in their best interest for it to succeed with Windows running on it.
rbanffy 25d ago
> Amiga couldn't over come the PC Amiga was too tightly designed around its chips, which were too tightly designed around NTSC timings. The more modular architecture of the PC allowed hardware to evolve at a far lower cost.

specproc 27d ago

> The report stated that the US had concerns about Japanese government market intervention to support the TRON OS and identified two specific markets where TRON was receiving government advantage. The US government is one hell of a moat.

childintime 27d ago
The financial center of the world selects its winners nearby. As simple as that. Businesses outside of the US have never had much of a chance. China does the same now, as the engineering center of the world. And they have to because the financial center is hyping them as a threat.
- bulbar 27d ago
  A dictatorship with the explicit goal of invading Taiwan, which is not only a close ally, but also of global geostrategic importance. That's not "hype".
  - otabdeveloper4 27d ago
    You're confusing "ally" and "vassal". Allies are countries that send troops to help you in war.
    - tremon 27d ago
      Whereas vassals are countries that you draft to help you in war?
      - mr_toad 27d ago
        Yes, by definition, a vassal owes allegiance to their lord, which includes military service. But you can’t really take a feudal term and apply it to modern politics. Taiwan doesn’t resemble a vassal in any meaningful way.
        Calazon 26d ago
        I think the idea is that a vassal state (operates as though it) owes allegiance to a stronger state, while governing itself (more or less) independently. And the stronger state exercises a lot of influence on the weaker state, especially in terms of foreign policy, and potentially provides it with protection from other strong states. Not sure exactly how much this would apply to Taiwan in particular, but I think the idea in general can be meaningful in modern politics.
    - specproc 27d ago
      So many dead lads from both my countries fighting American wars, for zero gain to our peoples. That's vassalship, not an alliance.
    - deleted 27d ago
      [deleted]
    - OroPla 27d ago
      Allies will only help you if you are winning the war. Vassals will also help if you are losing.
    - Calazon 26d ago
      There's certainly a spectrum between allies, vassals, and directly controlled territories, but it doesn't necessarily need to be about sending troops to help in war.
  - roenxi 27d ago
    On the other hand, we can't tell if the US has a goal or not in the middle east or if destabilising countries is the geostrategy unto itself. People really need to dial down the hype, engage with the real world where large countries get to have a sphere of influence and start talking realistically about what behaviour is tolerable. I still haven't heard anyone make a case for why we keep hitting the Russians given what acceptable US foreign policy looks like. One of the two is worse and it isn't the policies written in Cyrillic.
    - pjc50 27d ago
      > why we keep hitting the Russians 1) "we" (the US) are not hitting the Russians, "we" (Europe including the UK) are providing them with weapons for their self-defence, since it is in our interest to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe happening on the Polish border. I am no longer clear what, if any, assistance the US is providing. It is also very important in this that no NATO or EU forces are engaged directly with Russian forces yet, despite persistent incursions into EU airspace and occasional sabotage operations in Western Europe. The UK is developing special US ITAR-free missiles for this purpose: https://www.thedefensenews.com/UK-Develops-Three-Low-Cost-Long-Range-Cruise-Missile-Prototypes-for-Ukraine-Under-Project-Brakestop/ https://www.thedefensenews.com/UK-Develops-Three-Low-Cost-Lo... 2) "start talking realistically about what behaviour is tolerable": I think we're past the point of pretending that international law applies evenly, and back to Mao's "power comes out of the barrel of a gun". If we go back to a Cold War multipolar world between China, the US, Europe, and Russia, the only one of those which hasn't made public statements threatening European territorial integrity is China. (at this point I would expect India to start asking whether they get to be a world power or not and what they're going to do with that, too)
      - roenxi 27d ago
        > since it is in our interest to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe happening on the Polish border. If your argument is preventing trouble on the Polish border, why is the strategy dumping billions and billions of dollars in weapons into the most corrupt country in Europe, who happens to be on the Polish border? Keeping a conflict worthy of WWII smouldering in the area for more than 4 years now? The sensible thing to do would have been to encourage a Ukrainian surrender early on and send them some food/whatnot in a care package, then fortify the Polish border. This strategy actually employed seems like the most direct way to trigger a humanitarian catastrophe on the Polish border. It looks very destabilising. It is also one of the very few paths that could reasonably see Poland or countries in that general region getting nuked. Can we please be honest about our motivations here? We're all more likely to get what we want. Ideally peace and prosperity.
  - chabska 27d ago
    Democracy is when you drop a ballot every two/four years, and the elected officers ignore you while they take millions of donation from wealthy donors. Dictatorship is when the unelected representatives work their ass off to better the lives of the average citizens, because they're afraid of a revolution. (P.S.: Xi Jin Ping is as unelected as the British Prime Minister, but I don't see people calling the UK a dictatorship.)
    - Nursie 27d ago
      > Xi Jin Ping is as unelected as the British Prime Minister The British PM was elected, what on earth are you talking about? He won an election to his seat in Parliament just a few weeks ago.
      - implements 27d ago
        “Has no personal mandate from the entire electorate” - I suspect they mean. But that’s not necessary or expected under the British system, being an MP and Party Leader is enough. If Burnham radically departed from Labour’s manifesto you could then argue he call a general election to establish legitimacy for that, but it isn’t required.
      - chabska 26d ago
        He was not elected by the general public to the position of Prime Minister. He was elected, by a small number of UK citizens in his constituency, to the Parliament seat. British law doesn't even require the Prime Minister to be an MP, technically Parliament could elect any random bozo from the street to be PM.
    - pjc50 27d ago
      The UK PM change happened indirectly as a result of poor performance in the local elections. It does actually matter that the UK has multiple parties that effectively compete, even if some of them are blatantly sockpuppets for overseas millionaires.
    - Lio 27d ago
      That's because in the time since Xi took over China there's been 7 different UK Prime Ministers, most of whom were kicked out of office before their term ended. In that same period Xi has changed the rules so that he can hold on to power indefinitely.
  - ben_w 27d ago
    > A dictatorship with the explicit goal of invading Taiwan, which is not only a close ally, but also of global geostrategic importance. I think it's a safe bet that China will invade precisely when they think this won't cause them severe negative losses. This will likely be when Taiwan finds itself no longer a close ally of the USA, nor of global geostrategic importance. Of course, "safe bet" doesn't mean "in all possible timelines"; they may end up echoing the Bay of Pigs, Hormuz, or stumble against the hubris that turned the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand into a world war where all belligerents had the mistaken belief they would win.
  - juusto 27d ago
    The "dicatorship" of China never implemented such a thing in my country. USA "democracy" did.
  - kshri24 27d ago
    I don't like China for how it is behaving with my country but it is rich to talk about "invasions" when all the invading in the past half a century has been done by a Sole Democratic Superpower and its lackeys. Cannot believe I am having to defend China here but here we are!
    - Paradigma11 27d ago
      [dead]
- expedition32 27d ago
  [flagged]
- conductr 27d ago
  It’s also just less risky and easier to work with people that you are near, speak your language, etc. more so back in the 80s before most people were even using email, we Americans had virtually no contact with people on other continents even was limited in the business world.
  - childintime 27d ago
    I wholeheartedly agree. Even China integrated. It's not where the rift comes from.

krige 27d ago

> Amiga couldn't over come the PC. For reasons that had nothing to do with OS. Swap Steve Jobs with Irving Gould and Apple would be dead in under a decade too.

kalleboo 27d ago
Tramiel left Commodore in 1984 after battling Gould and Jobs left Apple in 1985 after battling Sculley. Apple then went on to have terrible management for over a decade, with people like Michael Spindler trying their best to run the company into the ground. Apple only survived as long as they did since they had really fat margins on their machines so e.g. the Apple II could subsidize the Macintosh for years. Commodore's focus on low cost made it a lot more difficult for them to e.g. fund the evolution of the Amiga properly.

tonyhart7 27d ago

apparently China decision to ban US tech company and build their own counterpart is seen as Genius after 20 years

alansaber 27d ago
Certain fundamental technologies are national security. If you proport to be a superpower you can't have your nation be fully reliant on say the Mac OS. Same with agricultural imports, IC development, dot dot dot
arkh 27d ago
One of the advantages of an autocracy: you don't need people's approval every 5 years so you can plan for decades. When you're right it is awesome. When you're wrong, well that's what the army is for.
- tonyhart7 27d ago
  You can badmouth about China all you want but at least they are consistent where they stand while US flip flopping about invading middle east (like usual) or Greenland
  - hvb2 27d ago
    I don't think he was badmouthing China at all. He's basically using different words to make the exact same point you're trying to make. When there's no real accountability, in a reasonable timeframe, it's much easier to plan long term. It's the same within companies. When the CEO assumes he'll be around for 5 years, should he shoot for the 10 year goal and reduce outcomes in the early years? Or does he just optimize for the next 5 years, thereby neglecting the long term goal?
    - tonyhart7 27d ago
      "When you're wrong, well that's what the army is for." he is implying that China bad action can be solved by PL red Army

close04 27d ago

> it just needs to get lucky enough to To not compete with something from a country which sees its interests threatened and has the power to squeeze you dry. The US intervention to apply pressure handed a weapon to an internal player, Masayoshi Son who just happened to make money selling US software. He used that weapon against his and US' competition. It's a playbook that the US used again and again when it saw its interests threatened by competition: hit the enemy hard below the belt while handing weapons to another internal player who will also hit the enemy below the belt. Every other example you gave came from inside the US, even from the same company with multiple products. The market played the defining role there and pushed for survival of the fittest. In TRON's case "market forces" turned out to be US intervention.

Aperocky 27d ago

Is it luck or bold product and marketing decision? Being first could be luck, or it can be foresight.

shevy-java 27d ago

> The technology doesn't have to be the best, it just needs to get lucky enough to become a standard and build a moat with that. I don't know about that. Top 500 supercomputers running Linux. I use both Linux and Win10, for instance (won't switch to Win11 no matter what), but whenever I have to use Windows, I wonder how this garbage could ever become so dominating in the first place. Inefficiency is very clearly a work culture at Microsoft; I notice this every time I copy data. And then wingers for Windows babble about how Microsoft does so much more behind the scenes - all of which is totally pointless. It is such an utter trash operating system, so I can not agree with "it it is ok to suck" statements. I much prefer solid engineering at all times.

jdw64 27d ago
But the idea that Windows is a "better OS" really seems accurate for people in the Third World. This is because Korean language support on Linux is terrible, and since all the commands are in English, it takes quite a bit of time to get used to it. Not only that, but there are so many distributions that you do not even know what to configure, and rather than doing RTFM, I just want to get my "work" done. In that regard, I honestly think Linux is better once you master it, but realistically, Windows is much more casual and practical. You might disagree, but for people outside the Anglosphere, Windows is far more casual. To be completely honest, the vast majority of people do not even like looking at PowerShell or terminal windows. It is familiar to programmers like us, but honestly, I do not like looking at terminal windows either. I would much rather look at an IDE. In the English speaking Linux world, you just map ASCII, but we need things like ibus or fcitx. On top of that, there have been CJK input method fragmentation and conflict issues for over 20 years. I think this gap exists because they cannot understand a situation where you have to debug an "input method config file" just because you want to type some text. Windows is a black box platform where multilingual rendering and the Office ecosystem are perfectly integrated. Only a very small fraction of its API is exposed. However, for the vast majority of applications, that is more than enough. The idea that Linux is great applies mostly to English speaking developers or those who want to fit into that English speaking development culture, but from a pure usability standpoint, I believe Windows is better. Linux is technically a glass box, but honestly, no one can understand every single part of it, meaning it practically functions as a cognitive black box anyway. Furthermore, Windows supports true plug and play where hardware just works the moment you connect it. Linux does not. Debating whether Linux or Windows is technically superior is meaningless, but I absolutely do not agree with the claim that Windows is terrible. Many Americans argue that Linux is better once you learn how to use it properly, but the moment you step outside the US, Linux becomes a flawed system where nothing works as it should.

bell-cot 27d ago

I don't know Amiga well, but IBM's OS/2 efforts were plagued by several Big Blue Blunders. And both the i432 and Itanium were sounded-great ideas - for which Intel could not ship even expensive and mediocre-performance hardware in any reasonable time.

ghaff 27d ago

I was (and am again) an IT industry analyst for quite a few years. At the risk of stereotyping (and realizing they didn't have a corner on this approach), Japan long liked marching to their own drummer with designs that were out of the mainstream to a greater or lesser degree.western

decide1000 27d ago

I wouldn't describe it as luck, it's politics. The mother of Bill Gates had access to the board of IBM. She was also the co-founder of Microsoft.

moregrist 27d ago

> And by the mid 80's the moats were already very deep. You raise some good points, but I don’t think the idea of moats from the 80s really holds up. None of the obvious moats in the mid-80s are still dominant players. In the mid-80s the PC market was still pretty new. Business was still run on IBM mainframes, DEC VAX, and other systems that were overtaken by forces in the late-80s and early 90s. These seemed unstoppable until they weren’t. I think the strongest counter example, though, is probably Linux. If your thesis was correct, an early-90s hobby operating system by some kid at a uni in Finland would never be dominant in cloud server spaces by the 2000s. > Amiga couldn't over come the PC. This is probably your best example. I would add BeOS to this. On the other hand, Apple managed to attract a core audience and stay alive (even if barely) through the 90s. Sometimes you don’t have to overtake; you just need to have a solid niche. > IBM couldn't over come the moat of Windows with OS2. OS/2 originally lost to Windows as a successor to DOS due to execution, not because Windows had a huge moat. OS/2 Warp was a bit later. The story of OS/2 failing is sad and as much about IBM internal politics as about Microsoft succeeding. > Intel couldn't overcome x86 with the i432 or Itanium. Intel bet on compilers being far smarter than they were in the 2000s (and possibly today) and didn’t seem to understand that most business applications at the time were limited by branching and integer computations. That stuff doesn’t vectorize well. The arch might be better-received today, although moving pipeline concerns to the compiler still seems like a bad choice to me. As a counterpoint, consider the rise of ARM in the 2010s. An arch known mostly in the embedded world has become a real player in the desktop and server environment. All because of the rise of phones, reasonable licensing, and better perf/watt at low power than x86.

rbanffy 25d ago
> Intel bet on compilers being far smarter than they were in the 2000s Funny Intel didn’t just fell for this once, but twice. I wonder what was Microsoft’s role on Itanium’s failure - it would be in their best interest for it to succeed with Windows running on it.

rbanffy 25d ago

> Amiga couldn't over come the PC Amiga was too tightly designed around its chips, which were too tightly designed around NTSC timings. The more modular architecture of the PC allowed hardware to evolve at a far lower cost.