In the past few weeks I have been trying to make the case that as far as I'm concerned, Apple may have had many 'great' products, but Microsoft had even more.
While some of the software I've reviewed here (more like reminisced about) was indeed made by Microsoft, other software just ran on a Microsoft platform.
I don't think that this is an important distinction. If you can make a great software platform (like Windows used to be), and other people build great software on it, you deserve at least some of the credit for that.
So why did it all stop working?
- First of all, I'm not sure it stopped working, could be just that I got tired of paying for software, when there are free substitutes (both in the free speech and free beer sense), that are as good or better (IMHO).
- Second, I think that the old software base, and the need to be loyal to it, just dragged the company for too long, and now it may be too late.
- Third, I think ESR makes a good point - closed software tends to become buggy and bulky with time.
It's a shame really, but I think we won't see much good software from Microsoft any more...
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