lukaszthegreat: buhahahaaha! me? fanboy? of Msoft?
you really don't get it. Windows, OSX, Linux, whatever. reread OPs post. What if we run dos! DOS.
hedwards: Upon rereading it, I think you're right that I misread it. The internet provides way too little in the way of context if you miss a portion of post or get the reference wrong.
Although, most of what you posted was in my opinion wrong. But, as that requires time machine games, it's hard to say how things would have gone.
There have been web browsers without need for a windowing system. And with the advent of higher resolution displays, there's no reason why we couldn't be watching youtube and the web from DOS, other than the fact that they moved to Windows rather than updating DOS to either 32 or 64 bits.
And few people used incompatible versions of DOS for any sort of serious work, usually that was a vendor supplied boot disk as it didn't need to be completely compatible, just in the areas that count.
i had never question the fact that a dos system (upgraded of course) could run youtube or crysis 2 or anything else.
the problem is popularity. most of things we are used to comes from the fact that computers are everywhere in everybody's hands. youtube is what it is because it is darn easy to use. there are millions upon millions of users from every part of the world probably including antartica, somalia and north korea...
reading news on net seconds after they happened is because there are people who read them. there is market for those news.
Gaming imo would still be a niche, a nerd hobby. PC gaming of course as I assume console would be as easy to use as they are now...
and not only gaming... people would most likely have professional programs to edit pictures, make movies, draw stuff on computers. yet i don't believe a common person would be able to learn how to use them without actually spending hours on studying. so something so simple like amv would not be possible for simple fan of anime.
it is all maybes, probably imnotsure things.
I am quite certain that internet would be much more primitive and smaller than it is today, that computers would not be as common as they are now nor they would be as fun or useful to use for most of us without a single easy to use operating system which united the market.
Of course if Msoft would not develop win probably someone else would. maybe they would do better job, maybe worse. I don't find win bad nor i find them perfect. I'm certain the system could be better but I would bet my left back testicle that it is easier for everyone to criticize than actually create an operating system being used by 90% of computers in the world.
