In Defense of Microsoft

But I will say this: All of us in the technology community owe a big debt to Microsoft. Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer shouldered a task that, for all their brilliance, Jobs and his colleagues at Apple didn't take on: making computing ubiquitous.

It's easy to bash Microsoft over its many failings, and I often do--particularly on the consumer front. But the Redmond giant has done an admirable job of getting pretty much every business on earth onto a single, functional platform.

Is that a criticism of Apple It is not. So hold your fire, fanboys. Apple makes great hardware and software. And not just computers, as its game-changing successes with iTunes and the iPhone--and maybe the iPad--prove. But an essential ingredient in that recipe for success is total control of the platform. Apple has it, Microsoft doesn't. So the very quality that made Apple a better platform than Windows also made the Mac a niche product.

Windows, Windows Everywhere

As computer technology really took hold in the 1980s and 1990s, businesses wanted standard products and standard software at a relatively low price point. Apple didn't offer that. If you wanted to buy an Apple, or later a Mac, you bought it from Apple or an Apple-certified dealer. Except for a very brief experiment, no other company has been allowed to build a Mac.