If SAP made toasters ....

The manual to run the toaster would be approximately 10,000 pages
long. The toaster would come with 2,500 switches which would all have
to be set in an exact pattern and in a precise sequence in order to
toast specific kinds of bread. Each pattern would be established by
SAP's experts as the "Best Practices"method of toasting that kind of
bread. It would take a team of basis and functional contractors about
1 year to configure the toaster in the best manner and then another 6
months to test it. In the meantime, your entire family would need to
attend extensive training classes on how to use the new toaster. In
order to support end users and consultants, MIT would establish a
list-serv for people to post questions and answers regarding toaster
set-up and operation. Of course, the online help would randomly pop
up in German. But once it was running, you'd get the best toast in
the world!


If IBM made toasters ..

They would want one big toaster where people bring bread to be
submitted for overnight toasting. IBM would claim a worldwide market
for five, maybe six toasters


If Xerox made toasters ..

You could toast one-sided or double-sided. Successive slices would
get lighter and lighter. The toaster would jam your bread for you.


If Oracle made toasters ..

They'd claim their toaster was compatible with all brands and styles
of bread, but when you got it home you'd discover the Bagel Engine
was still in development, the Croissant Extension was three years
away, and that indeed the whole appliance was just blowing smoke.


If Hewlett-Packard made toasters ..

They would market the Reverse Toaster, which takes in toast and gives
you regular bread.


If Sony made toasters ...

The ToastMan, which would be barely larger than the single piece of
bread it is meant to toast, can be conveniently attached to your
belt.

And, of course: If Microsoft made toasters ..

Every time you bought a loaf of bread, you would have to buy a
toaster. You wouldn't have to take the toaster, but you'd still have
to pay for it anyway. Toaster '95 would weigh 15000 pounds (hence
requiring a reinforced steel countertop), draw enough electricity to
power a small city, take up 95% of the space in your kitchen, would
claim to be the first toaster that lets you control how light or dark
you want your toast to be, and would secretly interrogate your other
appliances to find out who made them.

Everyone would hate Microsoft toasters, but nonetheless would buy
them since most of the good bread only works with their toasters.

If Apple made toasters ..

It would do everything the Microsoft toaster does, but 5 years
earlier.

If Linux made toasters...

Anyone could build his own toaster from the spare parts in the
garage, but people would still pay money for pre-built toasters. All
the parts would be user serviceable, and the design plans would be
freely downloadable.
Instead of the complexity of having to push a button, you would
simply type something like "toast-lightness?rk-bread-type=brown".
The toaster would burn your toast by default, but once you enable the
don't-burn-my-toast" feature in "toaster.conf"(as described in the
TOASTER-RTFM-HOWTO) it would toast reliably for years. People who eat
Linux toast say that it is better than Windows toast.

... And Microsoft would tell everyone that Linux Toast causes
cancer...