I spent a part of my career supporting IBM PC/XT, PC/AT and then Compaq and the many PC clones.
Microsoft, as its name implies, started out and cuturally was always a software company. By the time Microsoft started dabbling in hardware it was seen as a competitor by the many software licencees. Microsoft could never control the hardware side of their platform like Apple has.
The other factor is that Apple ditched the proprietary OS and went down the Unix/BSD and derivatives path. MacOS is effectively a FreeBSD derivative overlaid with a custom desktop.
Without a quasi-portable OS at the core, there is no way that Apple could have made the switches from Motorola 68000 to PowerPC to Intel to ARM.
Windows, on the other hand, is running NT which is basically a port of DEC VMS. Didn't work out well for DEC/Compaq/HP.
I spent a part of my career supporting IBM PC/XT, PC/AT and then Compaq and the many PC clones.
Microsoft, as its name implies, started out and cuturally was always a software company. By the time Microsoft started dabbling in hardware it was seen as a competitor by the many software licencees. Microsoft could never control the hardware side of their platform like Apple has.
The other factor is that Apple ditched the proprietary OS and went down the Unix/BSD and derivatives path. MacOS is effectively a FreeBSD derivative overlaid with a custom desktop.
Without a quasi-portable OS at the core, there is no way that Apple could have made the switches from Motorola 68000 to PowerPC to Intel to ARM.
Windows, on the other hand, is running NT which is basically a port of DEC VMS. Didn't work out well for DEC/Compaq/HP.
Dupe: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47342836