Microsoft Myth #3:

Reality: Until the late 80's, Microsoft made fun of easy-to-use computers as "etch-a-sketch in a box", insinuating that no SERIOUS computer user would ever want to use a GUI. In reality, Apple produced the first easy-to-use personal computer in 1984, when they introduced their Macintosh personal computer, and Microsoft did not have a product with a competitive ease-of-use until 11 years later (1995, when they released Windows 95).

Microsoft cannot even claim to have the SECOND easy-to-use GUI for personal computers, as both Digital Research/Atari (GEM) and Commodore/Amiga produced computers with a full GUI interface, without a stitch of Microsoft code, starting in 1985. Those systems failed due to lack of marketing and lack of marketing focus, not because their GUI was in any way difficult to use compared to Microsoft Windows 1.0 and Microsoft Windows 2.0, both of which were fairly pathetic (it was not until Windows 3.0 that Windows was really usable, and not until Windows 95 that it was competitive on ease-of-use with the Macintosh).

Microsoft Myth #2:

Reality: By those standards, a Porsche 911 is 50 year old technology. It has, however, been lovingly updated over the years to keep it state-of-the-art in terms of performance and handling characteristics, and even today is a "best of class" product.

Like a Porsche 911, Linux of today bears a resemblance to Ken and Denis's Unix of yore, but from a technological point of view is as state-of-the-art as anything else out there in its market space. While there are valid technical reasons why Linux is not the solution to all problems, "outdated technology" is not one of those reasons.

Microsoft Myth #1

Reality: By 1982, there were a variety of low-cost home and business personal computers. Commodore had a hit with their Commodore 64, while TI sold their TI99/4a for as cheap as $99. Kaypro and Osborn both sold compact business computers for under $2,000, bundled with a complete applications suite that included word processor, database, spreadsheet, and a small business accounting suite by Peachtree. Adam Osborne even boasted about his bundled software, saying you couldn't buy it separately for the price he charged for the whole computer WITH the software.

By 1985, there were a variety of personal computers and operating systems on the market, ranging from the Amiga to the Atari ST. Even on the PC platform there were alternatives to MS-DOS, in the form of Digital Research's Concurrent DOS/DR DOS, which would do a crude form of multi-tasking in the DOS environment, and DR's "GEM" graphical user environment. There was a variety of low-cost games and end-user applications on the market, most for under $50. For example, I bought a complete word processor for the Commodore 64 for $29.95 which was good enough to write a manual with (it even did indexing!).

In other words, the low-cost software and hardware industry existed prior to Microsoft, and will continue to exist after Microsoft. The functionality of low-cost software has grown considerably since that $29.95 word processor, but so has the functionality of computers in general (that word processor ran on an 8-bit microprocessor in 64K of RAM, while a modern low-cost word processor might run on a 32-bit microprocessor in 64 MEGABYTES of RAM).