People are very quick to jump on Microsoft and are happy about it. But I was in the computer business in the early 1980s, before there was a standard operating system. As a result of that, the software world was a gigantic mess.
Every computer had its own operating system, and they were all pretty much incompatible in odd ways. It was insane. Finding software to do exactly what you wanted was incredibly frustrating. Software developers couldn’t be expected to put out all these different versions of their work. As a result, you usually either paid a fortune for what you needed, or you went without. A common mantra was, “find the software to do what you want, then pick the hardware that will run it.”
There wasn’t any $49.95 software. A sorting program could cost $100. Word processing was $495, and it did squat compared to what you get today. Database, $495. Spreadsheet, $495. Disk defragger, $100.
You do not want to go back to the way it was before.
