You have Apple on one end, that relies on its “democratizing technology” competitiveness plan to win sales: White looks good on almost anything. Let’s make our computers easier to use through graphics. Let’s stop naming new products after the periodic table of elements.

On the other end you have the open source dudes who rely on idealism, cooperation and creativity to come up with beautiful products like Linux, Mozilla Firefox, Open Office and a lot of other doodads that promote the creative commons project.

The third end, which completes the trinity, consists of Microsoft that has been selling Windows as if it invented the GUI. Of course, everyone know that the GUI came from Apple but why isn’t it very apparent? Aside from external factors such as Steve Jobs getting fired from own his company several years ago, and the Mac fact that Apple’s 189 Theses versus Microsoft did not do get much mileage in court, what happened?

What did Microsoft do that Apple didn’t? Surprisingly enough, they had a better marketing strategy. While Apple was telling everyone to Think Different, Microsoft was showing people “how to wash those Windows.”

Check this guy out. Though you might disagree with him, he still makes so much sense to those programmers who speak in code and want to sell their product — also in code. No marketing, no life. No money.

Thus my thesis - that Microsoft is a software company that happens to have a strong marketing arm to highlight their strengths, mitigate their weaknesses, and ghost their competition.

Case in point: when your Mac portable breaks, don’t you feel some sense of empathy because it “tried its best?” When your PC breaks, it feels like its blaming you for breaking - “Are you sure? - Click Yes or No” is more like a premonition saying “I told you so.” That’s marketing!

Of course, things are a lot different now. Those iPods and iThings are oh so cool. They market themselves so well because they look nice.

For consumers, we all win: Everything gets cheaper with the marketing war turning into a price war.