But there are enlightening facts in evidence even today. Netscape directly led to browserware everywhere. This spurred the mother of all industrial revolutions in Internet Time. Capital threw itself at the dot-com entrepreneurs, in heat to hop onto the networks enabled and made vast by millions of Web surfing PC users. The ferocious counterassault by Microsoft was not in the least unexpected, but it did not deter billions from pouring into the startups, VC's, technology plays, and application gambits.
Every great invention suppresses countless others.
The transcontinental railroad doomed the entire long-haul covered wagon sector. But in opening new vistas it invites headier entrepreneurs to build on an elevated platform. But it contributed in a way that helps customers far beyond the dreams of Apple's less visionary leaders. For this, shareholders in the beast from Redmond deserve nothing more or less than the spoils of capitalist victory. And I, too, have eaten up the allotted space.