Do you think Bill could have done better?

AoE 4*

>>62396643

I don't think so. Microsoft had historically been Windows-as-a-platform, the core functionality wasn't nearly as important as giving a working platform for developers to do whatever the fuck they wanted.

Microsoft made phones before the iPhone came out, they didn't sell. In today's world, apps are key. And you can have all the money in the world making a FutureFone XP but if you don't have decent apps, you're not going to best the iPhone. Just like how it didn't matter how smooth OS X 10.4 was. The applications were all being made for Windows. That's where the mass market goes.

The value isn't in the hardware, it's in the ecosystem. At this point, there's no way to just buy your way into making a better product. There's not enough resources on the planet to just 'come out with' a better, filler, more mature ecosystem than what Apple already has. You need to define a whole new computing paradigm, like what Apple did with mobile-focused operating systems.

So if Bill can make a new computing paradigm that doesn't fit with classic desktop OSs, command line OSs, or mobile OSs, and start working on something in that space, he may be able to build a better product than Apple will be able to, but it won't be a phone.

Given how quickly windows went to shit after he left.
Yes.