What's behind Microsoft's fall from dominance?

[fishy_fiz]

Shock horror.
Yet another thread by sysadmin trying to convince themselves that MS is a doomed entity.
Seriously, give it up please.
I thought this was amiga.org, not "Imanapplefanboydesperatetoconvincepeoplemicrosoftisdying.org".

Theyre still the dominant desktop OS by a factor of 10 or more, plus their console is doing quite well.
All businesses have teething problems when trying to break into new markets. Even if they dont capture much of the newer markets then so what? Are you really so sad that hoping others fail gets you up in the morning?

[fishy_fiz]

If it werent for MS, we'd be using much less powerful hardware than we do now. Like it or not theyve played a huge part in what we're using today, even if a person choses another OS.
As for PC sales, that's a budget/recession thing as much, or moreso than a trend switching. Cheap/nasty phones and slate devices are more affordable to many people than a new computer (not to mention that a typical pc is as powerful as the phone/slate morons need, ergo they may not upgrade as frequently as they once mightve). Generic PC sales still outnumber apple pc sales by a massive margin.

Personally I dont care what people use, but this need to see others fail is sad and pathetic, and more than a little tiring. I visit amiga sites to read and chat about amigas, not to read about others delusions.

Also, "Micro$hit"?? Seriously? What are you, 12?

[fishy_fiz]

I respectfully disagree, I would say MS has set the the IT industry back at least 10-30 years. You don't want the 100's of links I could post backing this up. Thank goodness for the internet where true innovation is able to thrive and grow. Win7 & XP are not bad if you need to run a certain application or have a business need for them. I would say they are not particularly good either. Kind of utilitarian and boring. There are some cool software/hardware products on Windows from 3rd party developers.

Like it or not, MS *has* forced growth/progression in hardware. As a nice side effect pretty much every other computing device has progressed.
NVidia and Ati competed for the top spot in pc gfx performance, AMD and Intel have done the same. Core logic chipset features is also another battle, along with devices that rely on it.
All these things and many more took place on the pc (windows) battlefield, and have syphoned their way through to other devices, be it consoles, mobile devices, or whatever.

DirectX is the industry leading multimedia API, and sets the standards for graphics quality/performance (opengl was once ok but has been trailing for many years now(theres a reason next to no commercial games use it)).

[fishy_fiz]

some game developers yet uses OpenGL
for ex ID software games are all OPENGL,ie quake 2, quake 3, quake 4,doom 3, wolfstein,Rage etc
Doom 4 is not out yet but will be using OpenGL ID engine 5

ID are pretty much the exception to the rule, but even Carmack admits that d3d is superior. Their software also uses DirectX for everything other than rendering anyway.

[fishy_fiz]

To inject a little bit of amiga talk (who'd have thunk it), do OS4.x and/or MOS have DVD playback "out of the box?
Given their commercial nature Id hazzard a guess not (given the fact that, if what is written in this thread amongst the nonsense is accurate, it should be illegal).

If memory serves me correctly MOS doesnt, but OS4 does?

[fishy_fiz]

I don't know what industry you are in but MS is *far* from being dominant in the server space it's not even close.

UNIX-oids are by far the most used overall except for niche markets that are by definition tied to Windows like .NET etc.

Nah, not true. It's something a lot of computer enthusiasts will try to sell these days, but its not accurate.

BHP, Telstra, Optus, Compaq, etc. are hardly niche markets

[fishy_fiz]

Compaq definitely are.

Damn, I still have a habbit of saying Compaq rather than HP.
HP are definately no niche