“On August 12, 1981 International Business Machines (IBM), after failed negotiations with Digital Research, awarded a contract to a small software company based out of Albuquerque, New Mexico. The contract? Provide an operating system for their new line of personal computers. The company? A small 11-man outfit called Microsoft. The single most pivotal event in the history of modern computing had just occurred, and no one would realize it for almost another two decades,” James R. Stoup writes for Apple Matters. “But what if things had gone differently?”
“If IBM had chosen Digital Research it is quite probable that DR would have become very successful, …[but,] it seems unlikely that Digital Research would reach the current position of today’s Microsoft. Because for that to happen Digital Research would have had to blatantly steal from competitors and partners alike. Digital Research would have had to continually act in an immoral and often times illegal manner to preserve its position. They would have needed to have, as a corporate policy, an attitude of indifference to the anti-trust laws of this country and a willingness to crush anyone who stood in their way. In short, I doubt they had the will, or the leadership, to be so evil for so long,” Stoup writes.
Full article here.
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Related MacDailyNews articles:
Where would the computing world be if Microsoft never existed? – February 13, 2006
Mac users should not buy Microsoft software (or hardware) – May 16, 2003