Mac vs PC

[Randall Bearden]

On 4/1/05 8:37 AM, "Bob Richards" <bob at toprudder.com> wrote:

> 
> --- Erik Newsholme <bladesmith at mindspring.com> wrote:
> ---------------------------------
>  
> IBM went to another software company (can't remember
> who it was) in Seattle and they were just too busy to
> talk to the suits from IBM.
> ---------------------------------
> 
> I believe that was Digital Research. The 8-bit OS of
> the time was CPM, ran on many 8080 and Z80 systems of
> the time, and applications like dBase and Wordstar ran
> under it. IIRC, CPM-86 was slated to be released with
> the IBM PC, but was late. Gates had managed, as part
> of his contract with IBM, to require that a copy of
> MSDOS be included with every PC shipped (sound
> familiar!) CPM-86 cost something like $250 a copy,
> MSDOS was something like $50. (1982 dollars) As a
> result, MSDOS reached "critical mass" first and CPM
> became history.
> 
> Later, Digital Research took on Microsoft again when
> they came out with DRDos. Microsoft had let MSDos
> stagnate at version 3.x. DR came out with DRDos that
> allowed larger partitions and added lots of
> functionality missing in MSDos. All of a sudden,
> Microsoft started updating MSDos. DRDos was eventually
> sold to Novell? I think. I actually ran Windows 3.x on
> top of DRDos for a while.
> 
> Source for the above: My memory, which ain't what it
> used to be!
> 
> Here is a good link on the above discussion:
> 
> http://www.joewein.de/dri.html
> 
> Bob R.
> 
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According to Gates' biography, IBM approached him first and he told them he
didn't have an operating system to sell them and he referred them to Digital
Research.  The clowns at DR couldn't get past the nondisclosure statement
and IBM left.  Two weeks later IBM approached Gates again and the Microsoft
bought QDDOS (Quick and Dirty Disk Operating System) from a guy in Seattle
for $50,000 and the rest is history.  Had DR stepped up and seized the
opportunity the computing world might look a lot different.

If Apple hadn't fired Steve Jobs and replaced him with bean counters instead
of visionary leadership Apple have at least double digit market share today.
If Jobs had not rescued the company he confounded Apple would have gone the
way of the dodo bird.

Amazingly the bean counters are wrong over 50% of the time when they make
decisions on a company's strategic direction.  Visionary leadership and the
ability to take risks usually yields growth.  Cautious management and bean
counters (MBAs) will always lose to the bolder latter.

Any bets on the future of HP after Karly whacked off their core competencies
to make cheap printers and market Compaq relabeled PCs?  Again dollar signs
clouded her vision, as usual.

Randall Bearden 


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