Microsoft: Monkey see, monkey do.

Microsoft CEO's plan to battle the iPhone

Steve Ballmer sees a big opportunity for the new Windows Phones.

Has there ever been an original idea to come out of any department at Microsoft except for marketing? Sometime in the future and a land far, far away they will study the Microsoft phenomena as an icon of the worse in American ingenuity. Microsoft has never developed an original idea. They have stolen every single idea they ever marketed from MS-DOS to Windows to x-box and now their own version of the i-phone.
Since the late 70s Bill Gates has been taking other's ideas, adding a few bells and whistles or not and marketing them as his own. DOS belonged to some guy in Illinois who sold it to IBM and then IBM gave the rights to Microsoft. Windows wasn't even thought of until Jobs and Co. at Apple came out with the Lisa and then the Macintosh. X-Box = Atari. Excel, Word, Power Point all have their roots in programs by Lotus, WordPerfect, Adobe and Apple.
How have this band of bandits done it? I was plugged into the PC industry back in 83 when the Mac came out. I was very tuned into what went on for the next decade. How did they do it? Who the fuck knows? I know they made a killing when IBM came out with the IBM PC and used MS-DOS as the operating system. That gave them a huge stash of cash for marketing and development (buying a bunch of computer genius developers from the best schools). They used this resource to come up with a Windows operating system for the IBM PC. With mega giant IBM behind them and all the independent computer manufacturers that used the IBM/Microsoft architecture, they managed to make another huge killing. I have to laugh when I think of all the weenies who used DOS that used to belittle the Mac operating system as "a toy" and make lots of other snide disparaging comments. It was like religion to them to hack their way through DOS and Lotus 1-2-3 while Mac users were just pointing and clicking.
I'm still amazed at how the best product doesn't always win in the world of marketing. Windows is still a piece of shit with DOS running in the background. It bombs out constantly and crashes hard sometimes. I watched my wife struggle with Windows for years in her office, always thinking, geez, if only they had Macs. Now she uses a Mac exclusively. It never crashes, never loses data, always connects to the printer and is simply easier and more intuitive to use.

So why? Why does Microsoft continue to thrive with ripped off technology and fancy marketing?