Chapter 35 Section 2

After Gates returned to Microsoft, he showed people Apple's stuff. Everyone was immediately fascinated by Macintosh's graphical operating system, and the engineers who accepted Apple's development tasks were very happy with Macintosh's operating system. down to work.At this point, Gates' mood became even heavier.On the one hand, in front of him are the unlimited business opportunities and bright future brought by the entry of computers into the family, and on the other hand, the great danger of being eliminated in this technological revolution.Gates has always valued the operating system connecting users and computer systems, knowing that it is more important than any other application software, and it is also easy to form a monopoly.But now, Jobs' Apple has a head start on new operating system software, and three insignificant applications are being handed over to his Microsoft.

Gates took measures to remedy the situation. He knew that it was impossible to catch up with Apple in the operating system in a short period of time. Microsoft could only reduce the impact of Apple Macintosh on the microcomputer market, especially the operating system market, and win time, and then catch up.Gates has always been a man who dies and lives later, as early as when he was studying at Harvard University, he was like this.That year, he was just in his sophomore year, and he saw an article introducing Altair's microprocessor from a magazine, so he wrote a letter to the boss of the company saying that they had written a BASIC for your company's microprocessor. The interpreter of the language, so that users can use BASIC programming on Altair's processor.In fact, the interpreter was completely fabricated by Gates at that time. Altair is serious enough to see what Gates has.Gates, Allen and others actually rushed out one within a few weeks. Altair was very satisfied with the work of Gates and others, so they hired Allen.A few months later, Allen persuaded Gates to drop out and start his own company, Microsoft, full-time.Six years later, Gates was once again forced into a corner by Apple. He was unwilling to be a supporting role in this once-in-a-lifetime computer revolution, but had to win control of the operating system.Gates made a very correct strategic layout. The facts show that if Gates made a wrong step in many links at that time, it would be difficult for Microsoft to become the overlord in the future.

First, he fulfilled his promise to Apple to develop applications for the Macintosh.The whole development work is progressing slowly, and Gates is secretly happy, which shows that it is more difficult to develop applications on Macintosh than under DOS.These jobs are very useful for Microsoft to understand Apple and to develop a graphical operating system for itself in the future.Second, he agreed to IBM's cooperation in developing a new operating system, OS/2.Obviously, IBM's purpose is to regain control of its own PC operating system from Microsoft, but Microsoft still agrees, because it can use IBM's power to train the team, and secondly, it can restrict Apple. However, Microsoft is promoting It doesn't work hard on OS/2.The most critical thing is the third move. Microsoft secretly and very low-key learns from Apple and quietly develops Windows.And threw out two toy versions of Windows 1.0 and 2.0, which had to rely on DOS very unsuccessfully.At that time, no one thought that Microsoft could make an operating system with a graphical interface and a mouse.Gates secretly invited many experts to help out, including some of the earliest Xerox graphic interface people, David Neil Cutler, the host of the best operating system VMS at that time, and Jim Allchin, a famous expert in operating systems. Jim Allchin looked down on Microsoft's technology at the time. He said, your Microsoft stuff is the worst in the world.Gates was very generous and replied that it is because they are bad that you should be asked to make them good.In the end, Gates' sincerity and Microsoft's stock options impressed Allchin.

After completing the R&D layout, Gates wanted to use its backward DOS as much as possible in the market until Microsoft developed a new generation of operating system.Microsoft's approach can be summed up in two sentences, small profits but quick turnover and open comers. In 1980, Gates invited Steve Ballmer, a classmate he met at Harvard, to be the CEO of Microsoft.If Gates is the captain of Microsoft's giant ship, then Ballmer is the first mate.After Ballmer arrived, he managed the company formally, and he developed a marketing plan for Microsoft that later proved to be very effective.Microsoft provided BASIC to IBM for free, and at the same time it was almost free, that is, each copy was 5 dollars, and DOS was pre-installed on IBM PCs. This price is so cheap that everyone is too lazy to steal. (It is also for these reasons that Microsoft sold a lot of early software but did not make much money.) However, Microsoft used these conditions in exchange for the right to sell DOS.We said in the chapter "Big Blue" that IBM's mind was not on the microcomputer at all, and it did not realize that this contract eventually caused IBM to lose control of the microcomputer operating system.The free BASIC and the five-dollar pre-installed DOS are actually a bait of Microsoft. It is to attract software companies and computer enthusiasts to develop various software on it, so that users will rely on Microsoft.Among many application software companies, the tabulation software 1-2-3 of Lotus is the most successful, and almost every IBM PC has a copy installed on it. Lotus is actually bigger than Microsoft, which develops the operating system.

However, the flaws of DOS are obvious to anyone who works with computers.It is a very small and simple operating system, not even a strict and advanced operating system, because it does not have some basic functions of the operating system such as process management.The earliest IBM PCs used DOS because of their slower hardware and less memory.However, as hardware speeds increased, problems with DOS showed up right away.First of all, it cannot directly access memory above 640KB, because it was only designed for microprocessors with extremely small memory.Second, it is completely serial in task management. Things like listening to music while surfing the Internet can never be done on DOS.Especially when the 32-bit processor 80386 comes out, DOS will greatly limit the performance of the hardware.Gates, who comes from a technical background, understands this very well, but he has no choice.For a long time, Microsoft had to do its best to promote DOS, which was already very backward in technology, and also made several non-substantive upgrades to DOS, which had no future at all, with great fanfare, so as to buy time.This approach of Microsoft is actually very risky, because it is using big knives and spears to resist the foreign guns of Apple and later IBM (OS/2).But this time, Microsoft actually won.How did Microsoft create miracles?