The Microsoft saga has reached its first major milestone as Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson ruled in favor of the government's proposed antitrust remedy of breaking up the software giant into two companies. That's what happens when the government puts hazy regulations on the economy into the books and then leaves it up to the justice system to figure out how to adjudicate them. There is no question that Microsoft's hard-nosed business approach has been rooted in its zealous defense of the software it developed, even down to preventing users from having access to the source code. With the computer world still so new and developing so rapidly, the primary interest of the consumer has been standardization. The fewer base choices you have to make, the more time you're able to dedicate to decisions concerning direct applications to your needs.
Standardization also ensures an ease of compatibility which is crucial in the computer market.
When it comes to operating systems, consumers were naturally going to move towards creating a standard. Both Microsoft and Apple attempted to make their operating system the standard, but Apple held on to the idea of allowing its OS to run on its proprietary hardware, while the PC clone market exploded. Cheap, flexible PCs flooded the market, overwhelming the more expensive Macintosh, even though many would say that the Macintosh was the better computer, and the MacOS the better operating system. If IBM had held on to its hardware property rights like Apple did and Apple had opened up the clone market, then the Justice Department would be facing down Steve Jobs today instead of Bill Gates. But the thing is, the company that would guard its intellectual property would put that property at a disadvantage in the marketplace.