[Am-info] query about MS "Innovations"

[madodel@ptdprolog.net]

In <0204020236101F.04038@punzel>, on 04/02/02 at 02:36 AM,
   felmon davis <davisf@union.edu> said:

>Tying some of the thread together, I can say something like the 
>following to my colleague:

>The idea of bundling apps into a suite isn't original with MS (as  others
>downthread have pointed out) though it was a tremendously  powerful bit
>of marketing strategy - it gave MS a significant  competitive advantage.
>It wasn't a technical innovation for MS since  many of the plumbing ideas
>came from IBM's OpenDoc. 

>Moreover, MS's technical implementation has the disadvantage of  weighing
>down system resources with 'manatees'.  

>And while the consumer gains something: a bundle of apps for much  less
>than it would cost to buy them separately, the consumer is also  saddled
>with some inferior apps. Further, the loss of competition  also
>diminishes the consumer's options. 

>MS innovated neither the technology nor the idea of an office suite.  It
>did, however, alter the game much to its advantage.

Felmon,

And another major downside of Microsoft doing this and establishing a
monopoly in office apps, is the software mono-culture that has led to the
spread of word/excel/vbs viruses. Would this be as devastating if they had
a lesser market share and some real application competition?   So did
their marketing innovation in fact spawn the rampant spread of the
computer virus?

I don't run windoze here at all so I'm not familiar on how all these worms
and viruses work. So of what real value is there in making proprietary,
undocumented, file formats universally accepted for data exchange?  If
this is the problem, could the same downside apply if everyone used open
source formats for data exchange?  

 
Mark


-- 

 From the OS/2 Desktop of: Mark Dodel

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