The phrase “don’t bother me with facts” is quite apt when it comes to marketing. Those who are most adept at the profession know just how to deliver a mixture of facts and illusion to entice you to buy their products or services.

Certainly, I think few of you would disagree that Windows became the best selling operating system on the planet not because it was better than the competition, but because of Microsoft’s savvy marketing, predatory practices, and a whole lot of smoke and mirrors.

Certainly over-promising and under-delivering plays a big part, not to mention double-crossing business partners when deemed appropriate. A good example is OS/2, an advanced multitasking operating system they were developing with IBM. While all this was going on, Microsoft was also working full bore on Windows NT as is industrial-strength OS.

These days, very few people remember OS/2, which become just another failed personal computer operating system. For a while, I bet many of you even felt the Mac would end up in the dustbin of history too, and certainly Apple at one time was trying real hard to make itself irrelevant.

No wonder the merest suggestion of a sneeze from Steve Jobs is sufficient to make Apple’s stock plummet. He did, after all, save the company and today, approximately one third of the dollars spent on personal computers in the U.S. retail market, is earmarked for new Macs. How things have changed.

Story continued in this week’s Tech Night Owl Newsletter.

This article was posted on Sunday, October 19th, 2008 at 6:30 PM and is filed under News and tagged with: Amazon, Apple, Bill Gates, Boston, business, Ceo Steve Ballmer, Computer, Dustbin, Executive Team, Google, Google Apps, High Definition Tv, IBM, Jerry Seinfeld, Mac, Mac Platform, Macbook, Macbooks, Macs, Microsoft, MobileMe, New York, Night Owl, Notebook Computers, Remnants, Steve Ballmer, Steve Jobs, Vista, Windows 7.