enough ram to run without swap file thrashing. Price was high as well
These two are related. OS/2 needed 16MB of RAM to be useable back when I had a 386 that couldn't take more than 5MB (1MB soldered onto the board, 4x1MB matched SIMMs). Windows NT had the same problem - NT4 needed 32MB as an absolute minimum when Windows 95 could happily run in 16 and unhappily run in 8 (and allegedly run in 4MB, but I tried that once and it really wasn't a good idea). The advantage that Windows NT had was that it used pretty much the same APIs as Windows 95 (except DirectX, until later), so the kinds of users who were willing to pay the extra costs could still run the same programs as the ones that weren't.
Sort of. The desire not to cannibalise sales was a key factor in the design of the PC, but these were also features that IBM didn't think would be missed.
IBM knew what multitasking was for: it was to allow multiple users to use the same computer with administrator-controled priorities. Protected memory was for the same things. Why would you need these on a computer that was intended for a single user to use? A single user can obviously only run one program at a time (they only have one set of eyes and hands) and you can save a lot in hardware (and software) if you remove the ability to do more. And, of course, then no one will start buying the cheap PCs and hooking them up to a load of terminals rather than buying a minicomputer or mainframe.
Win 3.x would pre-emptively multitask DOS windows if you had a 386. It was one of its touted features. (There may have been a setting to turn this off and on, it may have been off by default). Personally during this period I used DESQview (or however it was capitalized) as a multitasker.
Windows 3.0/3.1 would pre-emptively multitask DOS windows if running on an 80386.
So did the Acorn Archimedes (the computer the ARM CPU was originally made for). RiscOS even had things like anti-aliased fonts by then, and certain user interface concepts that didn't show up elsewhere until Mac OSX came out.
However, the PC and Microsoft was already massively entrenched, and the news was huge - finally the computers most people actually used at work were going to catch up with the Mac, Amiga, Archimedes and other machines.
But anyone could tell that Windows was going to be huge. The PC was already dominant and Microsoft was already nearing monopoly position in the PC market (and IBM compatibles at the time had fallen in price such that they were price competitive with the Amiga) and the upgrade path for most people was not to buy a whole new computer but just add Windows.
I remember the news at the time. It was huge. Finally, the PC that nearly everyone was using was catching up to the Mac, Archimedes, Amiga etc.
And since Android app crash rates are actually lower than iOS
You're wrong, unless you can provide equally large-scale, cross-platform metrics. Compare the iOS 8 (most popular iOS version with about 85% usage share) crash rates (most recently 2.05%) with KitKat 4.4 (60% share) at 2.53% crash rate.
...that is one of the very nice things about firefox....... configurability.....
Configurability is slowly being removed. Remember how configurable the UI used to be before the Australis disaster hit?
...Just look at some of the self-entitled and abusive comments here on Slashdot....
Those comments started out as constructive criticism. However, Mozilla pressed on with their determination to ignore and alienate users.
.
Now Mozilla is getting the criticism they have earned.
Mozilla/Firefox has a problem. A big one. The first step in solving a problem is to identify its cause and not, as you attempt, to blame others for Mozilla's self-inflicted problems.
Tell that to Win8 when it starts complaining
The problem there is that you're using Windows 8. Get a real OS, not one with a toy interface.
"Experience has proved that some people indeed know everything." -- Russell Baker