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MICRO_SAGA
September 30, 2013
October 3, 2013
My version of the Microsoft saga, which
has been told before, but remains
strangely unknown still:
Gates was born to wealthy parents, and was
sent off to Harvard, where he pulled off his
one killer technical achievement: he
implemented a version of the Basic language
on one of the baby microprocessors of the
day. That was a good trick: no one was sure
microprocessors were going to be good for anything.
Gates, that radicial bad-boy, drops out of
college, and starts a company... with a million
dollars in funding from his dad. His focus was
computer languages for microcomputers.
Microcomputers continued to bubble along,
with the Apple II attracting some attention, (The Apple II *did* have
particularly when Visicalc came out (the competition by the way,
first spread sheet). There was also a small from various sources such
world much like what the IBM PC later as the Commodore Pet.)
became, revolving around cards built for the
S-100 bus, and an operating system called
CP/M, written by Gary Kildall.
Gary Kildall is a classic figure: the
smart, iconoclastic freak who pulled
off a cool technical project and REAL_GENIUS
challenged the big boys, in this case,
the corporate mainframe and mini
computer world. Kildall's original name
for his company was "Intergalactic
Digital Research", but this was later
shortened to just "Digital Research".
When IBM's Boca Raton Division
decided to enter the fray with That in itself might seem odd:
a microprocessor-based machine, *IBM* couldn't write their own?
they went looking for someone
to supply an operating system. They could, and they had: there was
an earlier machine released before
And now, here there is the IBM PC: a locked-down closed box
a mystery. I've read based on the APL language. No one
many things about wanted it. I gather that this is why
this, but none of them Boca Raton felt they needed to
quite add up (and many imitate the approach of the wide-open,
of the things you hear free-wheeling world of the micro
aren't *quite* true): underground.
Digital Research had
an operating system,
and it could've been
ported to the PC
architecture.
The IBM guys did talk
to Digital Research,
but they instead went
with Bill Gates, who
had no operating
system, and had never
written one. I would bet on two factors:
So: how did they end up o A cultural mismatch with the
with Bill Gates? anti-establishment Kildall.
o Bill Gates' family connections:
his Mom was on a board of directors
with an IBM exec.
Gates then went out and bought an OS
for something like 15 grand: this was
"Q-DOS" (Q for "Quick and Dirty").
He dusted it off, ripped out a bunch
of the interesting device independance
stuff, and shipped it as PC-DOS, with
a deal that allowed him to sell it on
the side as MS-DOS.
I have read (I no longer remember
where) that Q-DOS was later proved
in court to have been pirated from Gary Kildall died fairly young, by the
CP/M, but only the original author way, a result of a fight in a bar in
was held liable, Bill Gates Menlo Park. A nice tragic-romantic
skated. They did have to re-write touch, I suppose.
MS-DOS further, to strip out some
pirated code. (But... Menlo Park? Not the
waterfront of Singapore? Not
Bill Gates, somewhat famously, even the lower-east side of New
wrote a polemic against software York? Embarassing.)
piracy for the Homebrew Computer
Club publication in 1976.
HOMEBREW
Microsoft parlayed this sharp
dealing with IBM into an empire I'm of the opinion that Microsoft's
that surpassed them, cutting IBM rapacious business practices in
out of the center of the industry, later years had much to do with
and putting Microsoft right in the this creation story (along with,
middle of it. perhaps, a deep sense of guilt
about it): they were determined
It is to Microsoft's credit that no one would ever do to them
(I suppose) that they kept what they had done to IBM.
this empire going for quite
some time: that was not at "Partnerships" with Microsoft
all a given, any number of rarely ended amicably.
things might've shot them down.
Digital Research fought back
with "Dr. Dos", IBM fought
back with "PS/2", and Apple
might've found a way to push But the central point I'm making is this:
it's Macintosh line as a mass you sometimes hear people lionizing Bill
market product instead of a Gates, e.g. there was a period where
high-end boutique item... Rockwell at "Liberty" seemed to have him
confused with Henry Rearden.
But the lone genius spending
Throughout, Microsoft has always ten years on a project,
struggled with quality. Granted, the blue collar guy who
they were dealing in software, works his way up from nothing...
and software always sucks, but these are not a good fit
given their resources, the for the Microsoft Saga.
difficulty they had in getting
things right was somewhat amazing.
A typical Microsoft product was
a complete piece of junk that
started getting useable around
the third version...
Maybe this makes their success more
impressive, in a way: anyone can sell
a *good* product, selling a mediocre
one takes talent.
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