Applications

Abstract

In the 1990s, when I still had (some) hair on my head, the IT landscape was much more diverse. Several flavors of UNIX fought for dominance. Multiple processor architectures that are now gone or on their way to obsolescence, such as DEC’s Alpha, HP’s PA-RISC, and Sun’s SPARC, were common sights in data centers. On the desktop, IBM’s OS/2 was the OS of the future until Windows stole its lunch. As I write this in 2022, only a handful of viable options remain in each category. Why is that? Which factor ultimately determined the surviving processor architectures and operating systems? Naturally, the business strategies of the organizations involved played a role, as did the quality and features of the technologies involved. However, the decisive element was something else. In the end, users picked the processors and operating systems that enabled them to run the applications they wanted. In that sense, Word and Excel did more to ensure Microsoft’s dominance on the desktop than Windows itself.