Xerox Parc
They gave it all away.
Jobs never had an original thought
The stories are god.
Neither did Bill Gates.Originally Posted by Sanlmar
MS-DOS, which put Gates on the map, was a ripoff of CP/M.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CP/M#MS-DOS_takes_over
Actually, this was Digital Research's fault. IBM wanted an operating system, and Gates suggested that they contact Digital Research, the creators of CP/M. Digital was being too difficult regarding making an agreement, so talks broke down, and Gates ended up making MS-DOS to go with IBM PCs.
Gates famously wouldn't transfer the copyright of MS-DOS to IBM, believing the software to be more important than the hardware, and he turned out to be right. IBM PCs were cloned by other manufacturers, and eventually IBM fell behind in the PC market, while Microsoft became essential.
My father was a Honeywell guy. Honeywell ended up buying Xerox mainframe technology or maybe a whole line of computers from them.
He told me almost real time what was happening at PARC. It wasn’t 1973 but years later. He was just flabbergasted how stupid Xerox was. He wasn’t that smart or unique. Everyone knew a felony was about to be committed by someone like Jobs.
To further show how old I am, I learned both CP/M and DOS. You could often switch back and forth on a given PC.
You really had to immerse yourself in the backstory of the Homebrew computer crowd and the characters that sprung forth from it to truly understand why you saw the shit you did on both sides.
It was all so simple then. The 8080. In the very early 80’s I got side work around Mass tweaking PC’s for people who were running early AutoCad. Like version 2.17. Shit ran so slow. Just adding a math coprocessor (8087) was such a mystical thing to the user. I was literally stealing $ from people afraid to open up the box.
All the while, I knew about what was possible as demonstrated at PARC. But kludgy DOS could put greenbacks in your pocket.
From my perspective, MSFT & Windows is still is a kludgy pile of shit. It is just a bag on top of a bag. UNIX son. Marketing won. Gates was a brilliant marketer. The tech was shit.
Last edited by Sanlmar; 08-20-2018 at 06:54 AM.
As I trade TSLA (I can’t stay away) I think about how similar brilliant guys like Jobs and Musk end up getting bounced from their own creation.
Their vision and ego get ahead of their ability to negotiate the real world and politics. What is right doesn’t always win. You gotta inhabit the real world.
It has been a problem of mine. Absent the brilliant part - I used to believe what was technically right would prevail over politics.
That’s the stuff that allowed guys like Gates to prosper.
Every time I walk in Kendall Sq past the "Entrepreneur" stones of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, all I can think about was how them rolling Xerox was quite possibly the best and most greedy rolling of all time. Ship the scammatar
http://www.miraclecovers.com
"Donk down, that’s what you say to someone after they have lost 28K straight?" - Phil Hellmuth, online
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