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Essay on Effects of Microsoft on the computer industry
The story of Microsoft illustrates the value of an income stream from an already successful product as an alternative to raising venture capital. By 1990 Microsoft had emerged as the outstanding leader of the personal-computer software industry, and biographies and profiles of its founder, William Gates Jr., poured forth. In 1981, when firms such as MicroPro and VisiCorp were on the threshold of becoming major corporations, Microsoft was still a tiny outfit developing programming languages and utilities for microcomputers. Microsoft's market was essentially limited to computer manufacturers and technically minded hobbyists. However, in August 1980 Gates signed a contract with IBM to develop the operating system, MS-DOS, for its new personal computer (Daniel, & Knepper, 1991).
MICROSOFT'S WINDOWS
The launch of the Macintosh in January 1984 made every other personal computer appear old-fashioned and lackluster, and it was clear that the next big thing in personal computing would be a graphical user interface for the IBM-compatible PC.
The development of a GUI-based operating system for the PC was technologically very demanding for two reasons. First, the Digital Research's GEM operating system (for Graphics Environment Manager) was launched in the spring of 1984. Unfortunately, as users quickly discovered, the system was in reality little more than a cosmetic improvement; although visually similar to the Macintosh, it lacked the capability of a full-scale operating system. Sales of GEM could not compensate for the ever-declining sales of Digital Research's CP / M operating system for the now largely obsolete 8-bit machines. In mid-1985, amid growing financial problems, Kildall resigned as CEO of Digital Research and the company he had formed faded from sight.
Microsoft Windows was the last of the new operating systems for the PC to appear. Microsoft began work on a graphical user interface project in September 1981, shortly after Gates had visited Steve Jobs at Apple and seen the prototype Macintosh computer under development....
