Really? There was no special advanage their applications group had from their relationship with their OS group? Also, I recall Microsoft telling everyone to invest big in OS/2, and I recall Lotus and Wordperfect buying into it big time. Then I recall Microsoft investing big in Windows instead, and thus everyone else was way behind on Windows because they had developed for OS/2.
DO I miss-recall that moment in history when Microsoft's applications lept ahead of everyone else simultaneously?
Excel really took off on the Mac platform -- at first. So at least there they had no advantage. I agree that on Windows they always had an edge. But the truth is - everyone ignored the platform (everyone except users).
Microsoft was heavily invested in OS/2 as well. Just had the courage to ditch the platform when Windows was gaining market.
Point is: you don't have to leap ahead of everyone or be super innovative. Just make products that are useful and provide some advantage over the competitors (another example is the Flip video camera).
Excel really took off on the Mac platform -- at first
I remember that. I also remember that Excel was limited to using no more than 1MB of RAM. When they ported Excel to Windows, they fixed that so it could use as much RAM as your machine had, but strangely they didn't fix the Mac version. So, if you wanted to use Excel for very large spreadsheets, you had to use the Windows version or you had to go with a different Mac product.
But of course, if you wanted to share docs within an office, you would go with Excel and then gradually the Mac users in the office would be forced to switch to Windows :-)
DO I miss-recall that moment in history when Microsoft's applications lept ahead of everyone else simultaneously?