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However there is probably a quid pro quo somewhere in there that will give Microsoft leverage.

So the previous point still stands, with one minor modification. The giants will come to terms and the small-fry will be screwed.



Steve Jobs thought the same thing when he showed Bill Gates the Macintosh OS for the first time.


Good thing he had copied it wholesale from Xerox PARCs first. Saved them both some time.


Your history is incorrect, though. Apple was authorized by Xerox PARC to use their technology in exchange for allowing Xerox to buy 100,000 shares in Apple before their IPO.


I would use the word "concepts" rather than technology, although I'm sure there was some of that as well. The general UI, though, came from Douglas Engelbart's late '60s oN-Line System (NLS), the subject of the Mother of All Demos. Pretty much everything, windows, the mouse, just no graphics.

It was much copied, e.g. I'm think the Lisp Machine had the same basic GUI working by the time work on the Apple Lisa started, it was certainly reliable and somewhat polished as of the fall of 1979/1980.

If you're a student of this sort of history, it's a bit sobering how little "new" stuff we're really doing, it was all conceptualized and generally at least prototyped by the end of the '60s.


Hardly the same. Apple wasn't a 'giant' then, neither really was Microsoft. The tech landscape is very different now.


I disagree. Apple and Steve Jobs learned an important lesson from that "quid pro quo" meeting with Bill Gates that they'll never ever forget. reply




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