“Since Windows just copied the Mac, Its likely that no personal computer would have them.”
This is a sentence extracted from a speech by Steve Jobs at the 2005 Stanford’s commencement, can you tell me the exact meaning of this sentence?
THX in advance.
“Them” refers to the parts in blue here.
“…was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had [color=blue]multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts.”
news-service.stanford.edu/news/2 … 61505.html
Jobs was saying that if the creators of the first Mac had not developed or included " multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts", it is probable that the creators of Windows, or any other PC, would also not have developed or included such because the creators of the latter copied the design of the Mac.
And quite imperfectly!
Thanks Molly, your answer is very helpful for me to catch the speaker. Thank you!
Nice to see how some imperfections can lead to riches.
Well, you know that quality was not how Windows got so “popular”, right? You know the story of how Microsoft got so big, I hope.
Well, I don’t know. Fill me in.
In 1984, the first Macintosh came out, and it was so superior to other computers that people thought it would become the industry standard (which in a way it did).
However, not long after that, IBM created their first personal computer, and they needed an operating system for it. Microsoft, which was still a very small company, had an operating system that I believe they had bought for $10,000 from a man who didn’t understand its potential. That was the system that later became known as MS-DOS. Microsoft made it work acceptably on the IBM PC, and instead of making a lump-sum deal with IBM to buy the operating system, they kept the operating system as their own property, and they licensed it to IBM for a flat fee for every personal computer IBM made, whether the computer had a Microsoft operating system or not. This meant that if IBM produced a personal computer that had some other operating system on it, they still had to pay Microsoft a fee.
IBM wanted their personal computer platform to be the industry standard, so they gave the entire plans for it to a computer magazine, which published them. Now anyone who wanted to could create a clone of an IBM computer, and the IBM clone industry was born. Naturally, these manufacturers wanted to use the same operating system, so they made the same licensing deal and were obligated to pay Microsoft a flat rate for every computer they created, whether or not that computer had a Microsoft operating system installed.
This eliminated competition in computer operating systems, because if a manufacturer had the opportunity to use a different – often better – operating system, it made no financial sense, because they would still have to pay Microsoft also. This essentially meant that anyone who bought a computer other than a Macintosh had to pay what amounted to a private tax to Microsoft. Eventually, this type of licensing by Microsoft was found by US courts to be a monopolistic practice and a restraint of trade, and therefore illegal, but the courts didn’t punish Microsoft, but merely told them to stop it. By that time, the monopoly had been created.
That’s the main part of the story.