Has Microsoft ever come out with anything original on their own?

No.

 

the Blue Screen of Death. I'm pretty sure they originated that.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(burritos @ Oct 3 2007, 01:45 PM) [snapback]520689[/snapback]</div>

Why is that important? How many original inventions have come from Japan and yet they have decimated or come to positions of power in one time power house American industries like:

-car making
-television production
-cameras
-chip production
-baseball players

actually its not who is first - it is who reads the market applications of the item the best - witness the iPod which was not the first mp3 player - just the best suited for the marketplace.

How about x-box - and Halo - both microsoft innovations? How about Windows/Vista? Microsoft Office? I mean if you look at their lineup of products - they might not have been first - but they seem to be reading the marketplace pretty well.

 

Still no.

 

I was going to say Halo. Which you could argue is not an invention but a franchise. But then realized Halo was made by Bungie who used to be a Mac game developer who was then bought by Microsoft...

You get the picture...

 

MS DOS

 

i think this says it all for the people up in Redmond:

 

Now that made me chuckle. I still have an ME OS disk. Never did install it on anything.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(MegansPrius @ Oct 3 2007, 02:49 PM) [snapback]520745[/snapback]</div>

MS DOS was just a poor rip-off of DEC's DOS-11.

Tom

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(qbee42 @ Oct 3 2007, 02:40 PM) [snapback]520779[/snapback]</div>

by way of C/PM (ie, it was a ripoff of a ripoff).

 

[attachmentid=11830]

 

Such an awesome monumental failure... not only did CNet rank it as the worst product of the decade, it was also ranked as the 7th worst product of all time. Seems somehow fitting that it would be one of very few innovative products they produced

 

The genius of Microsoft has always been their uncanny ability to convince the majority of (mostly ignorant) computer users to buy and use their crappy software. Their programmers are retarded, but their marketing department is inspired.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(MegansPrius @ Oct 3 2007, 12:34 PM) [snapback]520774[/snapback]</div>

I actually had a computer that ran Windows ME. Gawd, that was a piece of sh!t.

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(Stev0 @ Oct 3 2007, 12:56 PM) [snapback]520789[/snapback]</div>

You mean CP/M of course. My first computer was a Kaypro 2X. That was one fine machine! 64K of RAM, two 5.25" floppy drives, and crystal-clear text in a luggable box that could go anywhere there was a wall outlet.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(MegansPrius @ Oct 3 2007, 01:49 PM) [snapback]520745[/snapback]</div>

Microsoft bought "DOS". They didn't originally develop it on their own.

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(n8kwx @ Oct 3 2007, 04:18 PM) [snapback]520843[/snapback]</div>

Correct. A guy in Seattle, he died just recently too. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS-DOS

Microsoft, believe it or not, really helped the Mac become a big seller back in the early days. Before there ever was a Microsoft Excel, there was Microsoft Multiplan for the Mac. Across the street from my parents house lived one of the early founding employees of Microsoft and we got a new Mac in 1984, and he gave my dad the pro deal on whatever software we wanted. So we got Multiplan, Chart, Word, etc when they were released.

Bill Gates wrote Basic for the Altair computer and this started Microsoft. Most companies grow by buying other companies, not by innovating. Microsoft Internet Explorer was nothing more than NCSA Mosaic in a new skin when it came out.

Windows was nothing like it is today when version 1.0 was released. Not until Windows 3.1 did it have any real user base, which was in 1990. Windows 95 started the ball rolling, and XP is the best Windows ever.

Bill Gates is a fascinating person, and certainly a genius of our time. You can't ignore Microsoft when you live in the Seattle area as I do. His company has made our property values way way way too high compared to where they should be. But he's also given many of us a good job too.

 

Dance moves by Steve Ballmer? :blink:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=Nc4MzqBFxZE

 

<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE(dbermanmd @ Oct 3 2007, 02:13 PM) [snapback]520717[/snapback]</div>

Same goes for buffer overflows. Microsoft did not invent them but is very proficent at programming them.

 

Yes. They invented the marketing strategy that rules the OS/software world. You may not like it, but it's so.

 

For a serious attempt. I will vote for VisualBasic.

Perhaps they bought it too, but it was the first development tool that made programming Windows applications easy.

Before VB, programming a proper user interface was very tedious. With VB you can literally draw up the interface and paste your "real" code in on top. Very nice. I first used it way back in 1991 (literally version 1.0) and it blew me away. (And I am a true Mac guy since 1985).

Other than VB I can't think of much else though.