SAST Wingees

“Avalon”che is coming – part 1 – lessons from history

Maybe because Microsoft Longhorn (code name for the next Windows version) is more than a  year away, there does not seem to be much noise about “Avalon” the new UI technology from Microsoft  that is part of Longhorn. I am starting a series of posts on Avalon to both gain awareness as well as raise awareness.  Anyone is welcome to post on this subject with your ideas and thoughts on this subject. The last tectonic shift that happened in the PC industry was the shift from DOS to Windows. It is very interesting from a strategy standpoint  to look back on this and see how Microsoft engineered  this shift and used it deftly to displace the then-leading products –  Wordperfect in Word Processors and Lotus 1-2-3 in spreadsheets.
1.  Here is a pretty complete extract from a book that chronicles extremely well,  with a lot of statistics,  the rise of MS Word and MS Excel. Of course, after achieving dominance, it used the now-famous suite strategy  by creating MS Office and  converted the dominance to total domination of the market.
2.  You can see the insider’s view  on this interesting Chris Pratley post. Also observe from the many comments on this post, how anything  about MS creates so much polarization. 3. I am sure many of us remember that old champ of wordprocessing Wordstar.  How Wordstar faded is documented well here. 4. James Gleick of Chaos fame has a superb article on Microsoft on his site. Next up:  Smart Client Technology & Avalon