Microsoft-Paul Allen

I thought it was just hilarious that Microsoft chose The Rolling Stones' "Start Me Up" for the theme song at the launch of Windows 95, unaware of the later lyrics in the song (not played during the launch, oddly enough), "You make a grown man cry-y-y ... You make a grown man cry-y-y ... You make a grown man cry-y-y ... " Who says they lost their sense of humor ... oh, you mean them being humorous on purpose, not making themselves a laughingstock ... mmm, not so much. As for when the lawyers showed up, Bill Gates' father was one of the most wealthy corporate lawyers in Seattle, so it wasn't much of a risk for Bill III to drop out of Hahvahd to pursue the launching of Micro-Soft. Hahvahd would have allowed him to return, especially given Daddy's large checks written to cover Bill III's tuition, fees, books, room/board, etc. So, Bill II and Bill III undoubtedly had frequent and detailed discussions about how to deal with IBM (non-exclusive licensing, IBM's onerous non-disclosure agreements, IBM's likely motivations for getting into the PC business, etc.). The PC was developed by the IBM Data Entry Systems Division in Boca Raton, FL - the keyboards, monitors, and terminals folks. IBM only saw the PC as a short-term, standalone product that, in the best case, would simply become a not-quite-dumb terminal that would increase the access to and sales of their office AS/400 systems and System 370 and other mainframe products. IBM developed a Token Ring card for the PC in time for its launch based on this intent, long before the Color Graphics Adapters were available, about six months after launch, and the CGAs were only produced in response to the completely unanticipated demand for the PC. IBM's suppliers were brow-beaten during the early years of PC production because they suddenly were faced with a need to produce millions, then tens of millions of parts per year. This was far beyond their past parts demand experience, and challenged them in ways companies never had been before. As Steve Jobs said in a full-page ad taken out in the Wall Street Journal upon the PC's launch, "Welcome, IBM. Seriously." Seriously, indeed. The Token Ring card barely sold any units, in no small part because IBM was completely unaware that microcomputer hobbyists and small businesses were using modems, especially the Hayes SmartModem products, to access on-line services such as The Well, GEnie, CompuServe, etc. And the rest, as they say, is history. All the Best, Jim Volunteer Senior Docent Artifact Restoration Engineer Geek 2.0 Artifact Computer History Museum On Thu, Oct 18, 2018 at 10:58 PM Wayne S via cctalk <cctalk at classiccmp.org> wrote: