Go Computing's founder is suing Microsoft for killing off the pen computing pioneer. According to CNET, "The lawsuit also claims that Microsoft stole Go technology, that the company threatened Intel, which had invested in Go, and that it used 'incentives and threats' to coerce Compaq, Fujitsu, Toshiba, and other computer makers not to use Go's operating system."
Microsoft used those tactics in the past (as proven through law suits won by Stac and others). Here is another tactic Microsoft used, as related to me by a third-party developer:
In the early 1990s, this software firm wanted to get the Windows NT developer's kit. Microsoft agreed, upon the condition that they also take the Windows for Pen Computing developer kit. In this way, Microsoft could claim a groundswell of support for its pen computing OS.
The two-fer didn't work, of course, because pen computers failed in the consumer marketplace back then -- just as Microsoft's more-recent push on Tablet PCs failed. Last weekend I was in the big Future Shop store in Vancouver BC, and I didn't see a single TabletPC. And come to think of it, I've never seen one in any electronics or office supply store.
In the early 1990s, one of the pen-based computer makers sent me a demo unit. My kids loved it, because they could directly interact with the computer -- sans keyboard and mouse. A few years later, the practical pen computer arrived: the Pilot 1000 from Palm. Whenever I see a bored kid at a meeting, I hand him my Sony Clie PalmOS, and within a minute he has found the stylus and is playing games. That's pervasive computing!
(PS: I still have a copy of Grid Computing's RightPen Pro operating system. I wonder if the descendents of Grid will now sue Microsoft?)
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