Re: UNsuccessfully M$ products

[Dave Sieber <dsieber@terminal-impact.com>]

  Luc-Etienne Brachotte wrote:
  > 
  > Appraissing M$ successfullness :
  > 
  > We must keep in mind that M$ has failed to sell successfully some
  > products :
  > 
  > - LAN Manager
  > - Money
  > - Microsoft Sound System
  > - Quick C/C++
  > - Quick Pascal
  > - Quick basic
  >   (in fact Quick *)
  > - the former "Microsoft Pascal"
  > - ... (please complete this list !)
  > 
  > Those products are either not standards, either no more sold.
  
  
  "Quick" became "Visual".
  
  As far as the C/C++ products go, I think they were simply adapted into
  the current "Visual" form in the attempt to persuade developers to
  develop for Windows. I imagine that Pascal may have been dropped in
  order to concentrate the product line more efficiently -- C/C++ for the
  high end, BASIC for the low (and besides, Borland really did have Pascal
  sewn up). Remember that VC1.0 had most of the previous edition (MSC7.0)
  but dropped the DOS development environment and added the Windows Visual
  Workbench and MFC, etc. Aside from the DOS IDE (PWB), the DOS tools were
  mostly unchanged and remained on the VC distribution up through VC1.52,
  after which they were dropped completely. Meanwhile, Borland, Symantec,
  Watcom, et al, continued to sell DOS development tools, so I doubt that
  MS considered that market dead -- it was just a way to try to convince
  developers to move to Windows, just as VC2.0 onward dropped 16-bit
  Windows development in favor of Win32. AFAIK, Watcom and Symantec
  continue to support DOS and Win16, as did Borland up through C++ 5.0,
  but BC5 is being dropped, or merged with, their new C++ Builder, which
  does Win32 only. Also, Borland's Delphi (previously Turbo Pascal) now
  does Win32 only. Watcom C++ is the core of PowerSoft's Optima++, and it
  does Win32 only. The difference is that MS was quite willing to drop
  DOS, and later Win16, support in their development tools even while
  there was still a viable marketplace for such tools, whereas others are
  gradually making that move as the market shifts.
  
  BASIC is still present and shipped as 1) the ubiquitous, feature-bare
  QBASIC interpreter found in every MSDOS distribution (unimportant), 2)
  Visual Basic, of course. Again, Visual Basic is designed to cater to
  Windows programmers. Remember that there was also a Visual Basic for
  MSDOS. I imagine it was dropped because of a genuine lack of interest on
  the part of the public, but dropping it did also align with the strategy
  of moving everything to Windows.
  
  In other words, I think these products were "discontinued" by choice, to
  move developers into the desired new platform.
  
  
  --
  Dave Sieber
  dsieber@terminal-impact.com
  http://www.terminal-impact.com