Microsoft has been crucial into bringing compute in people's homes, the evolution of video gaming, the internet etc.
They fluked a lot, they used their advantageous position like most companies try to, but assuming that we would have gotten better alternatives is not a given.
Also, in hindsight was IBM wrong to bet on Microsoft? They sure have done multi hundred billions $ together.
Yes. If you look at the Alto, the Unix OS or the original mac (which itself was a kind of inferior ripoff of the Alto), Microsoft's domination was very much a case of bad products driving out the good and setting back personal computing by decades. Not until Linux, the Internet and the Iphone did we start to get a taste of where most people in the 70s and 80s thought personal computing was headed.
It's not like CP/M was really better. Some of the minicomputer operating systems were but it's not clear they would have been a good fit for the IBM PC and, in any case, companies like DEC and DG wouldn't have been inclined to play in that space--especially for a reasonable price--at the time.
Microsoft has been crucial into bringing compute in people's homes, the evolution of video gaming, the internet etc.
They fluked a lot, they used their advantageous position like most companies try to, but assuming that we would have gotten better alternatives is not a given.
Also, in hindsight was IBM wrong to bet on Microsoft? They sure have done multi hundred billions $ together.