The presumption was made that Microsoft has market share due to time-to-market push by Gates, and that is a gross oversimplification. It has a lot more to do with cut-throat marketing tactics and industrial espionage (end justifies the means to Gates) than it does with simply driving a product forward, although Gates' time-to-market priorities do explain the fact that people generally avoid new MS products for 6-12 mo until the service packs that fix the most egregious bugs are available. Without ample testing, lower quality products are released, and after repeatedly seeing this, users are wary to buy the new versions upon release. The same goes for documentation - many people avoid the documentation that comes with a new release in favor of either after-market docs or the company's updated post-release documents. Microsoft's answer to this has been to force upgrades by refusing to issue any new licenses on the more stable, older version as soon as the new one comes out, regardless of the bugs. That is why MS gets reamed about Vista by the "Dilberts" (borrowing the term from earlier in this thread). It is costly in time (and therefore manhours and therefore money) to have to work around crappy products or wade through crappy documentation. Continuing to produce crap and fix it on the second pass causes a loss of faith in the customer base, and they start looking for more hassle-free alternatives. Then, the company can either choose to be more conscientious and earn the loyalty of their customers, or they can bully the competition out of the market to force the customer into a no-other-viable-choice scenario. MS has done the latter more than the former.
Rene
