John D. Alleyn-Day wrote:
[snip]
>  Similarly, it is
> difficult to have competition in the OS business because it is so
closely
> tied to the hardware and because there must be a uniform interface for
> application developers.  In fact, MS has a monopoly in the OS.  It is
using
> this monopoly to restrict competition in application development and
> therefore should be regulated just like any other monopoly.
>

If you watch closely, it seems to me that Intel (and HP behind the
scenes) are trying to undermine the MS OS monopoly with IA-64 hardware.
With HP, Sun, SCO, Digital, and MS all providng operating systems for
the *same* (or almost) hardware...Will Apple join the crowd? Will IBM?
(etc.) It will be easier to compare apples to apples, operating systems
to operating systems with the same hardware. Along the way, Intel is
setting pretty and MS has competition. Should be interesting. I expect
to see MS looking for a deal with IBM to put NT on another processor, or
working harder with AMD, etc., or some other strategy to undermine the
Intel monopoly.

HP seems to me to be positioning itself to provide the O.S. of the
user's choice (NT, Unix, or maybe even MPE) on the same hardware and the
same service and support. It will be up to VARs to actually sell the
things.

> MS should be broken up, just as the Bell system was broken up, so that
the
> OS is kept completely separate from applications.  There were definite
> disadvantages to the breakup of the telephone monopoly, but we learnt
to
> live with them and now have the cheapest long-distance rates in the
world
> (by a considerable factor).  So with breaking up MS - there will be
> disadvantages in the short term, but, in the long term, greater
competition
> will lead to better and less expensive software.

If NT overwhelms the O.S. market after the introduction of IA-64
hardware, then I agree, break MS into an O.S. with support services
company and a applications/consulting company. Or, maybe it will be too
late by then.

On the other hand, by then we might be talking about breaking up Intel.

>
> John D. Alleyn-Day
> Alleyn-Day International
> 408-286-6421   408-286-6474 (Fax)
> [log in to unmask]       http://www.Alleyn-Day.com
>

Richard Gambrell