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MONOCULTURES

                                             August    22, 2012

                                                      From material
Microsoft began supporting hardware from a            originally posted to
variety of sources as a way of getting out            Paul Krugman's blog.
from under their subservient relationship
to IBM.  As Microsoft became dominant, they
did well with multiple competing vendors
keeping the costs down, and because they
were dominant the microcomputer vendors
made sure that their releases all worked
with Microsoft software.

Compare this to the difficulties that
Linux has with the implicit goal of
running on all hardware: they do
remarkably well, but there's always some
uncertainty as to whether Linux will run
well on any particular new piece of
hardware-- it can take time for driver
support to materialise: most hardware
vendors don't bother to support Linux.

Apple has succeeded with it's "control
freak" approach for roughly two reasons:
(1) they run on what's essentially a
monoculture, with much less hardware
variation-- and the absence of competition
let's them charge high, and keep their
margins up (2) it allowed them to make
sure that *some* hardware supported their
software even without the market dominance
of a Microsoft.

It's entirely possible that the fact that
Microsoft needs to get in the tablet
hardware game is a symptom of the fact
that they are *not* the dominant players
there, but rather number 3 in the game.

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