Sorry but Steve Jobs was just a silly idiot

I didn't say that Microsoft and IBM made the first personal computer. I said that "If any one individual can be thanked for the fact that every office desk and every home now has a personal computer it's Bill Gates; not Steve Jobs".

I stand by that statement.

Apple may have released the Apple I and II in the late 1970's but Woz designed both of those - not Jobs - and there were other manufacturers who put out personal computers before that anyway. In fact if you want to get pedantic it is generally considered that the IBM 610 - which was released in 1957 - was the first ever personal computer (you can read about it here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_610). They also released the 5100 in 1975 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_5100). It's ridiculous to argue that those were really PC's though and I am not trying to take anything away from Apple and their place in history. However the fact of the matter is that it was IBM who designed the hardware architecture which eventually ended up on every desk and it was Microsoft - driven by Bill Gate's vision - which wrote the operating systems and software that ran on them all.

Personally I think it's stupid to say that any one person is responsible for the whole thing and that's what I tried to say. I'm simply stating that if you want to pick one person then it shouldn't be Steve Jobs, it should be Bill Gates, and furthermore that Jobs wouldn't even be second on the list. Once again I am not trying to take anything away from him. He was a genius and he had an amazing ability to take complicated technology and put it in the hands of every day people. He understood the way non-technical people think and he was abe to make technology for them. As I said he is responsible for the GUI and that was a piece of inspired genius. It shows why it's so difficult to give total responsibility to any one person though because, as I pointed out, he actually stole that idea from Xerox Parc. They didn't know what they had though and who knows how long it might have taken if not for his vision?

The problem for Apple was their business model. That is why they never sold enough computers and almost went broke. That is why there have probably been 100 IBM architecture PC's sold for every 1 Apple (I don't know what the real ratio is and it might even be higher!). The IBM PC was successful because the architecture was open and anyone could build one. That drove down the price and made them affordable to small business, whereas only large corporations could afford computers before that. In turn that led to the IBM PC architecture being the standard in business and then, when PC's became cheap enough to buy one for the home, the standard in the home.

IBM were late to the game - as you have pointed out - so they used other people's architectures instead of designing everything themselves; the way they had always done before the PC. They used an Intel chip - the 8088 - rather than designing their own and they outsourced the operating system to Microsoft. You're right that Bill Gates bought Q-DOS and modified it to meet IBM's specifications but it's highly dubious to say that...

Bill Gates stole from CP/M when he bought the CP/M ripoff Q-DOS and renamed it MS-DOS to sell to IBM.

...because it was Seattle Computer Products who wrote Q-DOS and they only did it because Digital Research were dragging the chain on development of an operating system for the 8086. It was IBM who wanted CP/M for the new PC because that was pretty much the default OS for "personal computers" at the time. All Bill Gates did was provide IBM with what they asked for. If he didn't do it then someone else would have so I don't think it's fair to say that Bill Gates stole CP/M as though it was his idea to do it. You're right that PC-DOS was a rip-off of CM/P but I think IBM should take most of the blame for that and not Bill Gates. If you see what I mean? It's also worth pointing out IBM initially went to Digital Research and asked them to write a version of CM/P for the PC but they declined. That was a very bad decision and they no doubt regretted it forever after; much like the record companies who declined to record The Beatles and the publishing houses who declined to print Harry Potter!

;-)

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