On this day in 1980 Microsoft formally signed a contract with IBM to create an operating system for the then in-development IBM PC. The operating system was based on an existing OS created by Seattle Computer Products. It was originally released with the IBM PC as IBM-PC DOS, but is now famously known as MS-DOS. Microsoft made it so that they acquired and solely developed the operating system, and would be able to sell it to other companies under the name MS-DOS. Because of these actions, MS-DOS became the dominant operating system of the time, and turned Microsoft into the dominant technology company of the PC era.
And, Microsoft was eventually sued for making it such that only PCs could use its operating system, including its browser. I remember Netscape suing Microsoft. I also remember an Apple software system called MacWrite, with its pull down menus and other terrific features, getting away from those nasty function keys: control c, control p. Ugh. Of course, Microsoft copied that idea. Alas, Apache today reminds me so of the original MacWrite. Thank you for those memories.
I look forward to these history in tech moments each month. I’m 56, female, and back in those 80s, while working in DC, I used PCs by day, usually with defense contractors (I get smiles and raised eyebrows from younger folks when I mention how we had access to an intranet of sorts among other knowledge), really hating that DOS system, and having the singular pleasure of using Apple for a small newspaper business in the evening. I became a long time supporter of Apple but in 2016 did buy a Lenovo laptop. Of course, my phone will always be an iPhone, however.
I just would like to reiterate that we don’t have to be younger than 40 to have been a part of this tech movement.
Apple didn’t invent graphical menu driven OS. Xerox did.
Has Microsoft ever put out the best application in any category?
Excel.
After Quatro Pro had more functions than Excel. Borland was superior to Microsoft.
IMHO their software development environment takes some beating
That’s not exactly how I recall what happened. Bill Gates & two other fellows were given the contract to devekop the DOS OS for IBM. Bill had the nouse to have allowed him/them to co-write their own very similar version of DOS for their own small start up company Microsoft.
There was no ‘Aquiring’ required.
Fire In the Valley … GREAT book on the history of the PC and operating systems, well worth the read.