Steve Jobs -2011

It was thus said that the Great Fred Cisin once stated: As the story goes, IBM approached Microsoft initially for BASIC for (what would become) the IBM PC. Microsoft started working on that. Them IBM came back and wanted a few more programming langauges like COBOL and FORTRAN for the IBM PC. Bill Gates realized that required an operating system, and sent IBM to talk to Gary Kildall over at Digital Research Inc. For whatever reason, Gary was not in the office at the time and his wife (at the time, she helped run the company) was relunctant to sign the NDAs IBM wanted. So IBM went back to Microsoft and ask if they might not want to do an operating system. Bill Gates, hearing opportunity knocking quite loudly (and knowing of an outfit in Seattle that had an 8086 based operating system they could license) Bill said yes, they could also provide the operating system. When the IBM PC finally came out in August of 1981, there were three operating systems available for it: PC-DOS (aka MS-DOS, rebranded by IBM), UCSD-P system, and CP/M-86 by Digital Research (Gary eventually signed the NDAs and developed a version for IBM). Of the three, PC-DOS was the preferred option from IBM, and also the cheapest ... -spc (So I'm not sure if Bill owes Gary an apology or not ... )