Re: 1 small news(MS and all)

[Ankur Agrawal <ankura@xxxxxxx>]

well, I think you got your history just a little bit mixed up.

> 
> IBM made PC - It was a open hardware and made possible creation of
> Microsoft, by giving it exclusive right to develop O/S for it.
> Microsoft Created a great porting of CP/M in the name of MS-DOS.

MS actually came up with a horrible first version.
IBM had to depute a number of thier own people, and also helped MS with 
development technologies, to come up with an acceptable version.
And are you sure they worked on CP/M ?

> It also created many good application packages to help spreading of PC.
> (Otherwise MAC and Sinclare Spectrum was much better machines at that point
> of time)

Just picking up on some small points.
Microsoft's applications came much later. (and its contribution was mainly
in marketing, not in creating) At that time applications were form third
parties, Visicalc, if I remember correctly, being the most famous. Lotus
also had quite a few applications.

> Microsoft had also created Xenix - first multi-platform UNIX implementation.
> Xenix led to development of Minix.

no probs. here, as far as I know.

> Microsoft forced IBM to develop better hardware specs to support GUI on the
> line of MAC (in the line of X-windows)

no!
MS was really sloppy, and really slow in coming up with a GUI. It really
woke up only after it realised that IBM was dead serious on its own GUI
OS-the Os/2. In fact, there had been other attempts within IBM itself at
such OSs much before Win 1.0

> Better CPU on PC, Availability of Minix had led the way to Linux.

I don't get it. I don't think Linux had anything to do with Minix.

> 
> But, to think of it without Microsoft there would have been no PC (as we see
> it today). No Xenix and possibly no Linux.

this is carrying things a bit too far. 
The real force behind the PC was IBM. (and later on, when IBM stumbled,
companies like Compaq) MS was in a sense lucky to get the OS contract at
such great terms. It could very well have been the other guy, I don't
quite remember his name, who was contacted before MS (Was it Kindall?) 
It is a bit naive to think that somebody else would not have caused the
same developments. The changes came due to the evolution of the industry,
and would have come about anyway. MS was just the agent that happened to
carry them through. 



Ciao
Ankur


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