Although I'm sure everyone not named Gary Kildall (sold DOS to Microsoft in the early '80s) can probably see the importance of this trend
Wrong!!!
Gary Kildahl gave us CP/M for the Zilog Z80, which was later rewritten for the Intel 8088. DOS was formerly Seattle Dos for S100 and SS50 8086 machines.
If you are going to use Gary's name in vain, at least get your facts straight! Gary may have made many mistakes, as do all of us, but selling DOS to Bill wasn't one of them.
PC/MS DOS made it because that's all there was when the PC came out and it sold for $50. If you wanted CP/M, you had to wait 6 months and it was twice the price. The six months was due to the fact that Gary had to rewrite CP/M for the 8088. We're talking Machine Language here, not C++. Seattle Dos was written in 8086 as a clone of CP/M so only minor modifications to the code were necessary for it to run on an 8088. As I see it IBM and happenstance sunk Gary and his company, DRI, and made Bill what he is today.
I don't know if you remember but the original PC had 16K of memory, was expandable to 64K, and had a cassette storage system. It didn't even need a DOS, LOL! Floppy disks were extra, and hard disks were not available for the PC. You had to wait a year or more for the PC XT to come out if you wanted a 10 Mb Hard Drive (IBM Fixed Disk).
I forgot. Since you don't have your facts straight, you probably don't know that Gary's company was Digital Research, Inc (DRI).
As for the folklore, Gary was allegedly off flying his new airplane when IBM called. Who really knows for sure. Nevertheless, CP/M was available for the PC. But no one wanted to pay the extra bucks or wait for CP/M to come out.
Gary was also responsible for the development of GEM, a GUI for the PC that looked and worked like the Mac.
Some of the guys at DRI started a new company using the GEM interface to release a new product called Ventura Publisher, the most successful DTP for the PC until Windows 3.0 was released.
Gary settled a law suit out of court with Apple in 1987 and was forced to make changes in GEM so it didn't look so much like the Mac. This is what prompted Apple to go after Microsoft later over Window's similarity to the Mac. They sued DRI first.
Jack Tramiel also worked with Gary after GEM was completed to port a version to the Atari ST. The Tramiels caused a big stink stealing Atari from Warner for a song (yeah the same company AOL just bought). This further angered Apple because Atari brought us Pac Man and Pong, and was a household name at that time.
I don't know if you remember but Jack Tramiel also started Commodore and brought us the VIC 20 and the Commodore 64. Later he had a falling out at Commodore and left to start Atari. He vowed to bury Commodore.
Apple didn't like the Atari ST because it looked too much like the Mac but never went after Atari. Atari's biggest market was actually in Europe, especially Germany, and Apple didn't care so much about Europe at that time. They rattled their sabres but Atari failed miserably in the end, all on their own.
Sorry for the walk down memory lane. I don't like it when people rewrite history to support flawed propositions.
I don't know about the rest of what you wrote, but your primer is definitely suspect.
I wonder about your ability to "see the importance of a trend," to use your own words.
I will give you the benefit of the doubt, however. I see others have responded to the remainder of your post.
Sincerely,
--Dave
Not A Disinterested Shareholder! |
