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The Software That Failed To Compete With Windows
harrymcc writes "When Microsoft shipped Windows 1.0 back in November 1985 — it turned 25 on Saturday — it wasn't clear that its much-delayed windowing add-on for DOS was going to succeed. After all, it was a late arrival to a market that was already teeming with ambitious competitors. A quarter-century later, it's worth remembering the early Windows rivals that didn't make it: Visi On, Top View, GEM, DESQview, and more."
Remember...He didn't even have DOS when he sold it to IBM.
What Gates had was a full suite of programming languages ready to port to the new micro.
What Gates had was the guts to promise delivery of a serviceable 16 bit CP/M clone in time for the scheduled launch of the IBM PC.
These were the words IBM needed to hear.
What Gates had was the smarts to negotiate a non-exclusive license for DOS -
which would sell for $200 less than CP/M 86.
$467 less, adjusted for inflation. The Inflation Calculator
MS-DOS would be the commodity OS.
That alone permanently altered the landscape.
The MS-DOS PC was an unquestionably viable commercial product before the cloning of the PC BIOS.
You can stand up to Microsoft, but only through co-operation, quality and reliability. Make sure that whatever you develop is to an internationally agreed standard that literally leaves no bit unspecified (even in an API function call).
That standards committee takes eternity and a day to come to a decision.
Which will, most likely - in the end - ratify existing practices, while tossing a bone or two to every significant faction. The Engineer. The Corporation. The Nationalist. The Ideologue, and so on.
The Kinect controller hits retail shelves just weeks before Christmas. 20% of prime time Internet traffic becomes a Netflix stream. Dwarfing YouTube, BitTorrent. Everything. 500 million people sign on to Facebook - before the geek is aware he has taken a punch to the gut.
No, his sons should be.
And forgetting games, GEM on the ST ( even in its original form ) was still more functional then MSwindows has ever been.
---- Booth was a patriot ----