[and similar quotes]
You think Microsoft wrote its software to run on a wide variety of machines, whereas Apple only wrote the Mac operating system for one specialized machine, is that what you’re saying?
Don’t be ridiculous. Microsoft wrote DOS for a single specialized machine: the IBM Personal Computer. You could not run it on your TRS or your Atari or your Commodore or your Apple II. You needed an IBM Personal Computer.
Because of IBM and its reputation (not because of Microsoft or the wonders of DOS, I assure you), the IBM PC became a dominant player. Then Compaq and other companies reverse-engineered the simple little proprietary codes embedded in the PC hardware and released clones. They did not do this with IBM’s blessing or permission, but they did it successfully, and for THAT reason and that reason alone the Microsoft Windows operating systems run on a large number of BRANDS of machines (not really a wide variety of machines unless you focus on NT which has a somewhat different history).
Apple, unlike IBM, wrote its own operating system software rather than subcontracting. Apple, like Microsoft, wrote operating system software with a specific hardware architecture in mind.
Today, Apple competes well among hardware vendors, generally selling more Macs than Gateway sells Gateways, more Macs than Dell sells Dells, and so on.
Among OS vendors, Microsoft dominates the market overwhelmingly. Apple? Merely the sole surviving OTHER operating system for which commercial software is generally written.
Apple is (as we all know) a victim of its own bad business decisions, but in large part its failure to take the number one spot is due to the original domination of IBM in the business world as a manufacturer of business machines. People bought the PC because it was made by IBM. The operating system that ran on the IBM PC became the leading OS because it ran on the IBM PC. Then, when clones of PCs came into existence, it cut into IBM’s business but certainly didn’t hurt Microsoft.
Some folks fault Apple for not deciding at that point to make it possible for other companies to produce Mac-compatible clones, which they were not able to do without help from Apple the way Compaq and other companies had been able to do with the IBM PC. This is perhaps true but it is not exactly a no-brainer. “Hey, let’s foster some competition for ourselves! We need someone to take away market share from us, someone who doesn’t have to dump any money into software research and development because they will be running our own OS on their machines!”