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Paul Allen's Microsoft Experience
theodp writes "Just in case Microsoft bashers don't have enough ammo, Robert X. Cringely has a couple of interesting tales in this week's column. The first explains how Bill Gates used Paul Allen's moonlighting at MITS to justify awarding himself 64% of Microsoft's stock vs. Allen's 36% (and Gates' failure to adjust the shares after he accepted a $10/hour part-time MITS job). The second heart-warming tale concerns a conversation Allen reportedly overheard late one night (as he was finishing up DOS 2.0) between Gates and Steve Ballmer discussing how to get Allen's Microsoft stock back if the Hodgkins disease Allen was battling killed him. Yikes."
First of all, Cringely doesn't even attribute this information to a real source in his article, so there is no way anybody can even verify this. He just says two good sources, which mean almost nothing.
The second thing is, this sort of planning happens all the time at every big company. I know most of the slashbots probably never worked a real job, but it's good planning in the corporate world to know plan for where such a huge share of stock is going to go.
In short, this article is such a hack job looking for biters, I don't even know why it was posted to slashdot. Wait, actually this was a perfect article for slashdot.
Slashdot Moderation: From positive to terrible in 2 "insightful" posts.
Try reading the article. Allen in no way "cries". Generally, he has kept his mouth shut, and the only way this article was written was based on third party information and other research. He has shown a lot of class over the years... but it is easy to take a cheap shot, isn't it?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Lets keep perspective before we feel too sorry for him.
From TFA:
Climb high enough in the organization, and it becomes clear that Microsoft's success has not always been based on legal or ethical behavior.
I have to admit, we need more of these articles out there. Here in Slashdot we know all about it, so we'd get the typical captain of the obvious or "no sh*t sherlock" responses, but we need the general public to read more of them.
I'm about as anti-Microsoft as you can get. I hate them. I hate them for making bad software and forcing zillions of people to use it instead of letting those people make a choice. I hate them for essentially undermining the best qualities of capitalism.
Many times I've wanted to believe "this is the end" and Microsoft is finally going to have the reputation in the general, non-techie public eye that they deserve to have. Heck, I'm still hoping the Vista debacle will be that trigger.
But to believe that one lawyer in Iowa is going to bring them down, when the full weight of the U.S. Department of Justice couldn't do it, and the E.U. is still trying to do it, is wishful thinking. Maybe Cringely just had to end with something dramatic.
The Internet is full. Go away.
To be fair to the robber barons of the late 1800s/early 1900s, didn't many of them donate to charitable causes? Well, yes, but that doesn't mean they weren't interfering with the free market or unfairly competing due to excessive market power. The B&MG Foundation is a boon to humanity, but that doesn't mean that it counterbalances Microsoft's misdeeds. I think it's perfectly fair to call MS on their (I hesitate to use this word, as it's misused too easily) immoral alleged dealings with Paul Allen, IMO.
Now we'll speculate as to why he would position himself this way, about how anti-establishment he implicitly is, how visionary and rightous he is about the computer industry. By stooping so low, he is only hurting himself and attributing intent to people who obviously have better things to do. Whatever, most of us already take his pieces as entertainement anyway. Doesn't mean he didn't cross a line and isn't responsible for his actions. I don't think he's important enough anymore to be noticed by the mainstream press, but his opinions are not merely disparaging, they can be attributed to plain and simple mischief. What's infuriating is not that he wrote it, it's that people will link to it and discuss it while it's not deserving of any attention. Fool me once, you can't fool me twice as the post-modern saying tells us.
How would Balmer and Gates have "gotten them back"?
Buy them. If you have a company with a small number of owners (Microsoft didn't IPO until 1986), you don't want to have 36% of the voting rights suddenly go to someone that knows nothing about the company (or technology in general) -- they could wreck the place. It's pretty common for companies to have rules spelled out for handling such situations (e.g. terms for other owners to buy out) when a key person leaves/dies. Cringely seems to be making a mountain out of a molehill (and I'm not a MS fanboy).
I know some will disagree with this, but being an owner of serveral technology companies, one of which doing classified work, ownership is something I have to worry about. If, God forbid, something does happen to one of my partners, and that ownership is given to the family, or lands in probate court for years, it has a chance of seriously hampering operations of the company. For one thing, the family is not involved in the operations, and could make incorrect decisions, or worse, sell off their ownership to anyone with the finances. Now, I do have some say in the sell of ownership, as a clause of the original agreements, and they do too, but these kinds of things really are a problem to fight. It sucks having to entertain those thoughts, but it is necessary. I think Cringley is always looking for fodder on Bill any chance he can, myself, I could care less. I use Macs as my primary machines, but have a Dell/Windows for games (if I ever have time for them) and my database sandbox is on Redhat AS 4.
That 'Flip-flops'-story seems like a real non-starter for me. Pretty much every single one of those 'changes of hearts' from Applle seem like something else to me. Some where caused by major changes to the entire computing industry (IE vs. Safari, Portables), some where caused be different people being in control of the company from one decade to another (Newton, Apple II), some where situations where Apple caved in to expecations of the outside world, but the original prediction was correct (Video iPods, Digital convergence). Reading the list of Apple 'Flip flops' tells me that Apple seems to have an excellent feel for the pulse of the IT world, and that when they've made mistakes in the past, they've usually tried to move past them.
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
From what I've studied of Microsoft over the years I'd have to say that if Paul Allen was still the guy in charge I might not be using Linux as my primary OS today. What originally drove me away from Windows and commercial software in general was the attitude that companies had when you had problems with their product. This all stems from the attitudes of the owners of these companies and most of all Bill Gates who is largely the founder and role model of the commercial software industry.
This bad attitude is at the center of the poor customer support, poorly designed and implemented products, and general lack of concern for what effect they're having on their customers and society at large. If Paul Allen had kept the reigns of the PC revolution the entire world could be a very different place now.
By being so extremist in his position Bill Gates created his own worst enemy in the form of free opensource software. It was his influence that created the need for a counter-influence. Someone more centered would never have created such a strong counter-culture.
Apple had a similar experience between Jobs and Woz though so maybe it's just something that was bound to happen.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
Or they could have had multiple classes of stock. Like Google. Where Larry and Sergey and other insiders have special stock which gets 10x votes.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
To Mud, or not To Mud, that is the Question?
Is Cringley throwing mud?
Or is Cringley reporting corroborated facts?
Or is reporting facts equivalent to throwing mud when the facts are ugly.
I don't know.
You don't know.
But I'm not the one concluding that because the purported facts are ugly that they are automatically equated with Mud.
Given Bill Gates access to lawyers, and Cringley's relative poverty and valuable reputation, I'd say RXC is certainly erring on the side of caution and has good reason to have said what he has said. Bill Gates, and Paul Allen who is also party to this, may not be as litigious as, say, Tom Cruise, but who wants to find out first?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
And here I thought capitalism was an economic system. Silly me! It must be the defining term of my society. My bad.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I am going to examine each of these points one at a time. Some of them just make me cringe.
Disclaimer: I was a PC user up until a couple of months ago, when I got a powerbook. I've barely used another computer since.
10. Apple II Forever: The 1984 introduction of the compact Apple IIc, at a boisterous celebration in San Francisco's Moscone Center, is interrupted by a magnitude 6.2 earthquake. The party, called "Apple II Forever," doesn't miss a beat because loyal Apple II users are already shaken up by their belief the company is focusing too much on the Macintosh, even though the Apple II is generating the bulk of sales and profit.
Unfortunately, nothing is forever, not even the Apple II -- although it comes close. On Nov. 15, 1993, more than 16 years after it was introduced, and with over 5 million units shipped, Apple quietly drops the last of the line, the Apple IIe. As a gesture to the faithful, Apple continues offering Apple II technology through an expansion card for some early Mac LC and Performa models.
What type of computer
sells well
for 8 YEARS?
I mean, seriously, am I the only one that thinks that's one hell of a long time for them to be selling what's essentially the same computer? It most likely got too expensive for them to keep selling it, and they dropped it.
9. Portable predictions: Apple chief Steve Jobs is lauded for his forward thinking, but he misses the boat on notebook computers. "(Smaller portables) are OK if you're a reporter and trying to take notes on the run," he tells Playboy magazine in February 1985. "But for the average person, they're really not that useful, and there's not all that much software for them, either."
He eventually changes his tune but Apple's first stab at a laptop, a 15.8-pound behemoth dubbed the Macintosh Portable, isn't much to write home about. Apple finally gets it right in 1991 when it introduces the truly portable PowerBook. Despite the PowerBook's popularity, a dozen years pass before Jobs declares 2003 "the year of the notebook" for Apple. "Many users are going to wonder why they even need a desktop computer anymore," he says then.
I'm not that old, and I can't really remember 1985, so I can't say for certain. But I gather from his quote that all the "portables" in that day resembled somewhat different hardware and software configurations to their desktop equivalants. I doubt that the macintosh in that form could be minaturized to a "portable" in 1985, either.
By the 1990s, there were companies selling laptops with 68k processors, that, with the addition of a ROM chip ripped from a mac, could run Mac OS. This arrangement was, obviously, very expensive for anyone who wanted an apple laptop, yet these clones were still selling. Did apple really have a choice about it?
8. Consumers cool to Cube: Never one to shy away from hyperbole, Jobs pronounces the G4 Cube as "simply the coolest computer ever" at Macworld New York in 2000. Apple gushes over its latest creation: "An entirely new class of computer, it marries the Pentium-crushing performance of the Power Mac G4 with the miniaturization, silent operation and elegant desktop design of the iMac. It is an amazing engineering and design feat, and we're thrilled to finally unveil it to our customers."
It doesn't turn out to be all that cool. Although praised for Jonathan Ive's innovative industrial design, the Cube fails to catch on with creative professionals because it's too expensive ($1,800), not powerful enough (450 MHz) and hard to upgrade. The Cube is put on ice in July 2001.
The cube was cool. Admit it. It had problems. I can admit that. It wasn't selling, so it was cancelled.
I will take a break at this point to point out that two of these three are nothing other than apple discontinuing products because they weren't selling. Yeah, shocking, isn't it.
What's next? Oooh, a real one.
7. Death to CRTs: Introducing the flat-panel iMac at Macworld San Francisc