From: Mike '/m' 

On Tue, 24 Jun 2003 16:29:26 -0500, "Joe Barr"
 wrote:

>http://www.fortune.com/fortune/alsop/0,15704,460546,00.html
>
>
>Alas, Poor Microsoft ... You Used to Be So Interesting These guys are no
>longer the zeitgeist-setting titans we loved to hate. It makes a
>polemicist like me sad. FORTUNE
>Tuesday, June 24, 2003
>By Stewart Alsop
>
>A tech-savvy friend of mine casually said something the other day that's
>been bothering me ever since. "Microsoft is in trouble," he
said. It's not
>unusual to hear people in Silicon Valley flip Microsoft the bird, saying
>stuff like "Microsoft is evil incarnate" or "Microsoft
must be neutered."
>But "Microsoft is in trouble"? That's a new one. How could my buddy
>possibly believe that Microsoft—Microsoft!—is in trouble?


Also from the article:

===
...More than that, Gates, who is pouring his soul and the bulk of his
worktime into Longhorn, sees it as a revolution: an easy-to-use operating
system for normal (i.e., non-computer geek) people. ...
===


Hasn't every version of Windows since Win95 been billed [no pun intended]
as an easy-to-use operating system for normal people?  For example, from a
Microsoft press release dated 3/24/1995:

"'Thousands of users worldwide are telling us that Windows 95 is
making their computer faster and easier regardless of the experience level
they bring to computing,' said Brad Silverberg, senior VP of personal
systems at Microsoft...."


And let's not forget Microsoft BOB....

  /m

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