[Am-info] query about MS "Innovations"

[Felmon Davis]

On Friday 29 March 2002 10:59 am, Mitch Stone wrote:
> On Friday, March 29, 2002, at 06:30 AM, Sujal Shah wrote:
> > On Fri, 2002-03-29 at 02:59, felmon davis wrote:
> > [snip]
> >
> >> today I was talking to a colleague, an economist, when the issue
> >> of the anti-trust suit briefly came up. he felt one had to grant
> >> that MS had been 'innovative' in certain regards and he
> >> mentioned the idea of enabling different apps to work together.
> >>
> >> I think he either meant (a) the idea of the 'office suite' or
> >> (b) the OLE mechanisms for data exchange among apps.
> >
> > I'm not sure about the office suite, but I've seen OLE and DDE
> > ideas from a couple of different vendors at about the same time. 
> > Apple, I think or NeXT (i can't remember the timeline) had
> > something very similar around the same time as Windows 3.1 came
> > out.  I even had someone (a NeXT user) show me a video tape that
> > laid out the embed and exchange concepts that NeXTStep/OpenStep
> > was designed for.
>
> Before Microsoft had OLE, Apple had Publish and Subscribe.
> Unfortunately, too few applications supported it, and it faded
> away.
>
>

It sounds like the answer is not very clear-cut. Recall the original 
question: Has MS 'innovated' in 'interoperability' in office suites 
either in the sense of (a) inventing new functionality (the 'whole 
idea' of an office suite, so to speak) or (b) inventing new plumbing 
(OLE, DDE, whatever).

The sense I'm getting from the replies are:

ad (a): maybe but perhaps more a matter of 'great minds thinking 
alike' since NeXT and Apple ('Publish and Subscribe') had similar 
designs at the same time. but - perhaps - even OLE and DDE are IBM 
inventions. so this is all unclear until I can do some historical 
research.

ad (b): no one has spoken to this. I thought Geoworks and something 
called Multiplan preceded Windows. (is the latter a MS invention?)

Further, many have pointed, not quite tongue-in-cheek, to 
market-tweaking innovations like: 

[i] version-numbering to sell new product and obsolesce old
[ii] reduction of acceptable rate of OP and app failures
[iii] offloading of post-development debugging, beta-testing and 
support and/or their costs onto OEMs and consumers

of course, the market-tweaking stuff wasn't what my economist 
colleague (or I) had in mind. 

any directions for me to look with regard to (b), the office suite 
innovation claim?

F.



ad (b)