Interesting word "influential."
In choosing "most influential" as the standard for a survey in conjunction with its 25th anniversary, the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) all but guaranteed the results this poll of IT professionals produced.
"Best" certainly would have been a different story.
But, hey, it's their survey and "most influential" in this case means Microsoft, whose products took four of the top five spots in a Web poll - warning light flashes - that attracted 471 participants. (Can you guess the lone Top 5 interloper? It wouldn't make my Top 10 ... answer below.)
Whatever one might think of Internet Explorer - and plenty of people hate it plenty - critics face an uphill climb in disputing its perch atop this list once "most influential" is established as the criterion. Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer recently noted that "the install base of Windows computers this coming 12 months will reach one billion." So why not Windows on top of the list? Because that base doesn't use Windows, per se, it uses IE.
Of course, having topped out at 95% market penetration in 2003, IE has seen a steady erosion of its share in subsequent years, primarily due to the accelerating consumer embrace of Firefox. Another poll in five or 10 years will likely be less kind to IE.
No. 2: Microsoft Word, with which I type these words.
No. 3: Windows 95, the release of which now seems so long ago as to make me want to weep.
No. 4: A tie ... Microsoft Excel, which strikes me as a strange choice, given my aversion to numbers, and the mystery intruder we'll get to in a moment.
As for the remainder of the Top 10, poll respondents picked:
No. 6: BlackBerry.
No. 7: Adobe Photoshop.
No. 8: McAfee VirusScan
No. 9: Netscape Navigator.
No. 10: Palm Pilot.
And as for that Top 5 product that Microsoft didn't make: Apple's iPod.
Hey, don't blame me; I didn't get a vote.
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What was it Newton said?
Something about standing on the shoulders of giants?
Microsoft was only influenced to buy a Web browser (anybody remember NCSA Mosaic? Just for kicks, call up the About screen in IE) because of Netscape. And Nescape, of course, would never have come into existence were it not for the World-Wide Web.
Now, technically, the Web isn't "a product," so if you're talking about influence, you've really got to give the nod to either the original Mosaic or Netscape.
Standing on the shoulders of giants, making like pigeons...
...doing to the industry what pigeons do to statues. Yep, that's Microsoft...and, after having been in the industry longer than CompTIA has been around, not at all surprised that they chose to publish these "survey" "results".
Let's see....472 responses out of what they call a "trillion-dollar" industry. A rounding error in the statistical noise - but it gets a plug for the guys in Redmond who, like CompTIA from its inception, were only into "innovation" that they could make a buck from today, and five bucks next year.
Now, if Windows 1.0, 3.1 or 2000 had ben on the list instead of counting several different Microsoft-acquired products, I would be a bit less cynical. But then, it wouldn't be such a wonderful marketing tool.
My Top Five would go something like:
1. NCSA Mosaic
2. Windows 3.1 - the first version of Windows you could actually con an "average person" to use, and the version that truly got Microsoft into the mainstream home and business.
3. The Apple Macintosh - for showing the world what a good GUI could let you do, even on the early, constrained machines. Imitated egregiously, but never equaled.
4. The Apple iPod. Showing the world that intelligent design and slick marketing would get people to pay attention to you; delivering powerful simplicity in a luxury-item-for-the-masses could get people to look at your other products (#3).
5. The original PalmPilot - taking the science-fiction "pocket computer" and putting it on sale at a big-box retailer near you.
Microsoft makes one of the five (full disclosure: I worked at Microsoft on and off for a total of four years, and still own some of their stock I didn't unload in time). But the genius of Windows never was in technical innovation. But in the redefinition and perfection of ruthless business practices combined with marketing for the sheeple, Bill Gates has proved H.L. Mencken to be wildly overcomplimentary ("Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intellligence of the American public.")
CompTIA recognized the profitability (not quite the same as "business value", but close enough for the shareholders) of hitching their wagon to the Mighty Microsoft Marketing Machine. After all, with shrink-wrap licensing, who needs quality -- or ethics? Leave those "outmoded" ideals to the Apple (and Sony, and...) also-rans. Hmmm... "quality" combined with "also-ran"... are we talking about the PC industry or what once was the American political system?
What!
How can folks identify IE as the most influential product? IE was not even the most influential product in its own category - Internet Browsers.
What were these 471 people drinking, smoking or snorting?
ROFL
Who ARE these jokers?
I can almost guarantee that the 471 people polled all work in Redmond WA :) CompTIA should be ashamed of themselves for doing a poll with such a miniscule sample size.