I think it’s a valid point to say that Windows made PC’s more accessible/appealing to average Joe than DOS.
At the same time, the shipments curve did not increase with Windows being delivered, it was already on a very steep trajectory.
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The first MP3 player was not released by Apple. I’d argue that what made MP3 players big wasn’t so much Apple as it was file sharing. Granted, Apple came in an dominated the market but Jobs did what he has done in the past. Took someone else’s ideaand ran with it. The first MP3 player was released way before the Ipod, like 2 years before. The GUI wasn’t his idea, thank Xerox for that. The IPhone was neat, but as far as revolutionizing the phone world, I don’t buy it. Apple has a 14% market share. Heck, Android is beating Apple right now as far as OS penetration. Also, the first touch screen phone was released before the IPhone.
The Ipad isn’t a new idea at all. The first one came out in…wait for it…1989. Beat Apple by just a *little *bit on that one.
So, we have proven that all the visionary ideas Jobs had were…taken from someone else. Well, except Pixar. Oh, but that was started by George Lucas as a computer graphics outfit that worked with Industrial Light and Magic.
Jobs is very good at what he does. He creates huge amounts of hype. Apple creates well engineered products. However, Apple also wants to control every damned thing on those products. Cite. Pay Steve or else. Of course if MS did this the anti-trust suits would be flying.
Gates is very good at his job. Microsoft creates solid products that are well engineered (after the third try in most cases*). The nice thing about Microsoft is that they don’t want to control everything that runs on their OS compared to Apple. Also Microsoft expanded beyond the PC and got in the server market.
Apple doesn’t do shit in the most important market, at least as far as I am concerned, which is servers. They have two server options. Servers are the big deal these days, they are what keeps businesses running. They are what keeps the internet (along with switches/routers, which is Cisco) running. Microsoft and various *nix flavors own this market with MS owning about 62%.
Jobs is a great CEO. Visionary? Well, he certainly has great vision for seeing other peoples ideas and then taking them for his own.
But then again, so does Gates.
Slee
*MS has a history of botching the first release or two of new products. They’ve gotten better (Vista turned into 7 in one generation instead of the usual 2) but it is a legitimate complaint.
A person doesn’t have to be an inventor in order to be a visonary. Yes, nearly everything Jobs has done has been based upon inventions made or work originally done by someone else…including the Apple I, which was almost all Steve Wozniak’s creation. But Jobs was the one who saw it’s potential and made it commercially successful. Wozniak himself has said many times that if not for Jobs, the Apple I would never have become more than a hobbyist machine.
And yes, Xerox PARC developed the original GUI, but Jobs instantly recognized its potential in making computers accessible to everyone and immediately began investing time and resources into developing what was to become the hugely popular Macintosh user interface.
Jobs saw the potential in George Lucas’ movie-making software company which was languishing for the most part, purchased it and turned it into Pixar, one of the most successful movie-making entities of all time.
Jobs recognized the potential of the MP3 player as not only a music-playing device but one which could allow users to purchase, download and listen to music legally and inexpensively. He oversaw development of the iTunes music program and the negotiation of contracts with music companies to make their music available to iPod users through it, and, typically, he made the iPod beautiful and easy to use. People ate them up!
Then he saw the potential offered by the cellular telephone and set about creating the iPhone and all its bells and whistles, integrating within it the iPod, a camera, and a host of cool programs that could tell you the weather anywhere in the world, what was happening on the stock exchange, allow you to watch Youtube videos, etc., plus download thousands of other fun and useful programs from another Jobs innovation, the iTunes store.
And then we have the iPad, something that had been on the horizon for years but which no one felt would be very useful. It was too big to be a good phone and too small to function as a computer or television. But guess what? Jobs created a table machine that has so many cool and desirable features, and is so useful after all, that Apple has thus far sold 7.5 million units and can’t keep up with the demand.
Steve Jobs has changed the way the computer business works, the way the music business works, the way the cell phone business works, and now he’s set the standard for wireless tablet internet appliances…
And he’s made them all delighful to own and use. They are without exception beautiful, well-designed and a pleasure even for the novice to operate.
In short, Steve Jobs has the ability to foresee what electronic devices people are going to want to use and how they are going to want to use them. He has the ability to recognize, design and develop and incorporate into them features and capabilities that they wouldn’t even know they want until they see they can have them. He talked about this in his 1989 interview in Inc. Magazine (in which he was named Entrepreneur of the Decade for his…wait for it…visionary capability!), stating that if you ask people what they want in a computer, they’ll give you a list of things that exist now. But if you ask them if they’d like certain other features that they don’t know about yet, they’ll say “Yeah, you mean I can have that too?”
So what Jobs does, and what he excels at, is recognizing in advance what people want, and then delivering that to them in beautiful, well-designed, reliable and easy-to-use devices that they can’t wait to get their hands on and use.
All of this is the very definition of vision, and I don’t know of anyone anywhere in the world who is as good at it as Jobs. Or at least not in the field of consumer electronics.
I don’t suppose you’re familiar with Gates’ famous email bemoaning the difficulty using Windows and other Microsoft software and the fact that so little thought has apparently been given to the user experience? Cite
I know this is a big deal to some people, but I couldn’t care less. In fact I approve of it; it makes Apple’s products work the way they’re supposed to.
I imagine there are millions of people in the country who feel Jobs hasn’t done anything in the area they would prefer. Apple simply isn’t a server-focused company.
Not to be snarky, but doesn’t that in itself prove his visionary capabilities?
Among his other remarkable talents and capabilities, Gates has shown some visionary capabilities, chiefly in selling DOS to IBM while simultaneously retaining the right to licence it to other manufacturers. But I don’t think he’s even close to being in Jobs’ league.
YMObviouslyV. 
Huh? Windows doesn’t run on every system or architecture. It works on personal computers with a specific architecture. When the web browser came out in the early 90’s, giving us the promise of applications that * could * run on every architecture, Microsoft nearly soiled their armor and created Windows Explorer in one of their first “embrace and extend” attempts to prevent a standard from being established.
I’m not convinced that there was much visionary in Microsoft’s success. They were in the right place at the right time, and well-positioned to take advantage of the network effect. Once enough people started using their applications (Excel and Word), they had achieved lock-in. The “PC in every home” was going to happen regardless, once processor costs dropped like a rock in the early 90’s and hardware became relatively affordable.
I’m going to give the nod to Jobs because, if he is no more innovative than Gates, he is an early adopter and a risk taker. Apple was first with the mouse and the GUI. (And yes, I know about Xerox – I mean first compared to Microsoft.) They weren’t first with laptops, but they were the first with * popular * laptops – it’s hard to realize today just how astounding the first Powerbooks were. (Don’t know if Jobs had any influence on those, though, as he was long gone by then.) The first Next workstation I saw amazed me because it had a CD-ROM drive. In the early 90’s, having 600 MB of data available on a PC was incredible. Again, Apple didn’t invent WiFi, but they seized upon it early and introduced their Airport. All of a sudden computers were free of the tyranny of the ethernet cable.
But more importantly, they were the first to jettison out-dated technology, risky as that appeared. People sneered when the first Macs came out without floppy drives. When was the last time you saw one? SCSI interfaces? Gone.
All of this before we mention the iPod, iPhone, iPad, or App Store.
I didn’t say there wasn’t a PC compatible market before Windows. What I was saying was, for users like my grandmother the lack of single operating system tied that user very, very closely to a single operating system. That limited their ability to really become full adopters of computers in general, and instead meant they could only become adopters of a specific type of computer.
Hewlett-Packard was around in the 1940s and so was IBM, that doesn’t have anything to do with the price of tea in China. Compaq would not have become the company it did without Windows, I didn’t say Compaq wouldn’t exist without Windows. Compaq became a multi-billion dollar company because it was positioned to sell tons of PCs pre-loaded with Windows in the early 1990s. Compaq’s revenue went from something like $5 bn in 1992 to $20 bn in 1996, in case you weren’t paying attention that is when Windows started to really become widely adopted. Windows 3.0 and 3.1 captured a huge portion of the market share, but Windows 95 to me is synonymous with things like the Compaq Presario (one of the first computers that pretty much anyone who wasn’t homeless could afford) and the massive explosion in how common it was to see personal computers.
The market was established, but not exploding. That’s just flat incorrect, your history is wrong and unsupported by the numbers. In 1998 337 million PCs were sold. In 1993, that number was 152 million, in 1988 there was something like 50 million computers in use in the United States.
If you were a computer user in the 80s you may have a faulty memory. Most of those 50 million computers were in academic institutions and businesses, which might own hundreds and hundreds. Relatively few were owned by home users (not least of which is because of the price, computers easily pushed $5000 in the 80s.)
I also feel like you’re getting hung up on the term “PC compatible.” When I say PC I’m not talking about “IBM PC Compatible”, I understand that was the nomenclature at one time, and that’s how I used to use that term. However in 2010 I no longer use it in that way, I consider a personal computer to be any computer designed for home use by an individual in their personal life. That encompasses Amiga, all the IBM clones, Apple II and et cetera from the 80s. I understand why that distinction was important at one time, but getting hung up on that word usage makes no sense today. We’re talking about personal computers generically, not IBM Compatibles.
Yes, but that’s again beside the point. IBM was pushing OS/2 and continued to push OS/2 into the mid-90s, which was stupid and really shows a good example of them lacking vision in comparison to Gates. Gates got Microsoft out working on OS/2 pretty much as soon as he realized the folly of working on a system that was so tied to one manufacturer (and once Windows 3.0 shipping so many units.)
Vision is an arbitrary term, but I’ll argue that Gates was the only one who saw where the PC market was going and capitalized on it.
Apple didn’t invent GUIs either. That’s really beside the point, though. Henry Ford didn’t invent automobiles and Edison didn’t invent most of the stuff he’s famous for either.
I never said Windows runs on every architecture, where did I say that?
I think it’s really amazing so many people consider Steve Jobs a visionary when he took concepts that were already well established and simply repackaged them. Then when someone calls Gates a visionary he gets blasted because Windows was just a repackaging of concepts people had already created…
I don’t really deny that Jobs has come up with more famous things that Gates, but Gates achievement with Windows alone has had a greater impact on the world than all the more minor achievements of Jobs combined.
That’s before we even factor in the truly creative ways Gates has gone about philanthropy. How many other billionaires before Gates were actively campaigning other billionaires to pledge the vast majority of their fortunes to charity?
Huh?
How else can I interpret
?
I think what you * might * be saying (not trying to put words in your mouth, just trying to understand your point) is that once Microsoft established their operating system and associated applications, it was possible for users to reliably ship data back and forth in the form of spreadsheets, Powerpoint, and Word documents. This kind of interoperability is important. But it isn’t so much that Microsoft was visionary in establishing a common vocabulary for users, as they came out on top amongst a heap of competitors. Not always through excellence, but mostly through the force of sheer adoption.
DOS and IBM compatibles quickly became the defacto standards, well before Windows. While Windows was nicer because it was a GUI that ran on top of DOS, the common operating system and hardware was already well established.
If grandma owned a computer prior to Windows became popular, there was an extremely high probability it was an IBM compatible running DOS (and still was after Windows because DOS was still required).
Go look at the growth charts of worldwide PC shipments from 1980 onward, the PC market was exploding prior to Windows, period.
Whether Compaq was experiencing similar growth, I’m not sure, but I do know that the fact that them creating an IBM compatible was a critical event in the establishment of the IBM compatible market, which in turn helped MS a great deal. If that had not happened, it’s entirely possible a different platform would have established itself as the defacto standard and MS may not have benefited as much as they did.
Look at worldwide pc shipment growth between 1985 and 1992, it’s even steeper than post 1992.
Thank you for the numbers.
1988, 50 million to 1993 152 million is about 300% growth
1993, 152 million to 1998 337 million is about 220% growth
300% growth is greater than 220% growth.
I was a computer user in the 80’s (bought my first one in 1980), and was a software developer that entire time, still am, and lived and breathed computers and I believe my memory is not faulty.
Fyi: average-ish computers hovered around $1,000 in the 80’s, 90’s and first part of this decade but advanced in power rapidly during that time. I looked at the Apple computers which cost about $1,000 in 1980, I couldn’t afford that (paper route only makes so much money) so I bought a trash 80 color computer for $499.
It’s true that most homes did not have computers in the 80’s but businesses did. And all of that purchasing by businesses, along with the competition due to compatibles, and the ability to run DOS created a defacto standard.
By the time home users came along the path was already established.
It’s important because it was a critical piece of the perfect storm that established the standard which benefited MS greatly.
Key items:
An open platform
Competition kept prices down
A common OS makes for less re-training/conversion, etc.
OS/2 wasn’t restricted to one brand of PC, why do you think that?
Microsoft was smart with how they played that. Windows was good enough and once established OS/2 was not going to win that battle.
Side note: OS/2 was a stable operating system, much more so than Windows, but that really didn’t matter, Windows was good enough for what most people were doing.
Hardly the only one, but definitely saw the opportunity and capitalized.
It’s true that Apple didn’t invent GUI’s either, but there is a difference between their use of GUI and MS. For Apple the GUI hadn’t really been used commercially prior to their use (as far as I know), but for MS there were a boatload of people (including myself) saying “wow, these Apple’s sure are easy to use, why don’t you have a GUI?”, and then eventually they created one.
The Macintosh GUI wasn’t well-established. In fact it was little more than experiemental when Jobs discovered it at Zerox PARC. He immediately saw that this was the way ordinary people would be able to use computers and he set about developing the technology into what it became on the Macintosh.
Gates, even after seeing what Apple was doing with GUI and mouse technology, thought that it was a silly and childish interface and that it would go nowhere. He has admitted to embarrassment over not seeing that it would become the dominant way that people would interact with their computers.
Besides, there’s no definition of “visionary” I’m aware of that requires that the visionary in question to have been the original inventor. What is necessary is to see potential that other people have missed. Gates never saw missed potential in Windows, rather it was something that he was more or less forced to develop in order to stay competitive.
That’s because Gates truly did little more than repackage the interface that the Macintosh popularized. Jobs built the interface into what it was and Gates merely copied it.
See? You yourself admit that Jobs “came up” with these things. He did not simply copy what other people were doing.
And again, the reason that Windows became so ubiquitous is because most of the computer-using public and the business world had adopted DOS as a result of IBM’s having adopted it for their computers. Had DOS not already become the standard operating system for 90% of the computers already in use, Windows would not have become the widely used interface that it’s become.
Yes, Gates is accomplishing great things in the field of philanthropy, but how does that make him a great visionary? Anyone with his money and intelligence and committment could do the same. It doesn’t require any particular vision to say “Hey, my money could be put to work making life better for people in underdeveloped countries.”
This is not to belittle Gates’ efforts or the tremendous amount of good that he’s accomplishing, but it wouldn’t be accurate to attribute that to vision.
Jobs, his companies have come up with lots of cutting edge ideas.
Microsoft has offered a new OS over and over and stopped support on the ones you bought ,to force you buy the new one. Gates has a staff of lawyers so he can take what he wants and force you to go broke in court. To get a monopoly nowadays is hard to do. Gates pulled it off. As a business man who wants to max profits, gates is impossible to beat.
OpenOffice is an open source office suite that appears to be inspired by MS Office. But of course word processors and spreadsheets were around before MS Office.
Here’s an interesting article from Fortune Magazine (via CNN) that shows that while Apple has but a 4% share of the world’s cell phone market, it’s raking in 50% of its profits. Jobs has sculpted a company whose manufacturing efficiency and cost structure make it almost impossible to compete with. The results, when combined with the functionability, desirablility and ease-of-use he integrates into his products, are nothing short of amazing. Cite
The Apple II was a huge success in its heyday, and was certainly a great improvement (if an expensive one) over what else was available — at least in the late 1970s and early 80s when it was new. Even after the IBM PC came out (1981), Apple IIs remained very popular in homes, schools, and small businesses, for much of the 80s. And, to the extent that the Apple II was a solid, appealing, and salable product, you can credit much of that to Steve Jobs’ work in 1976 and '77.
In contrast, the IBM PC and PC-compatibles were primarily just business machines until Windows 3 came out. Maybe even Windows 95. If Gates’ vision was to have personal computers on everyone’s desks, he certainly took his time getting there.
As hinted up-thread, MS-DOS was not revolutionary in any sense. It was a clear imitation of CP/M, written earlier by Gary Kildall. MS-DOS wasn’t even Microsoft’s or Bill Gate’s imitation. It was bought outright from another programmer at another company. Microsoft wasn’t living on vision in those days.
A minor nitpick: Microsoft didn’t start out in the operating systems business, or even office applications. They were an implementor of computer language interpreters and compilers — until one day in 1980 when IBM came knocking at their door, more or less out of the blue. If IBM had gone with CP/M whole-hog, as they’d originally intended, Microsoft might have gone extinct sometime in the 1980s, and hardly anyone here would have heard of them.
Jobs is a visionary because wanted an OS that everyone could use and Gates is a visionary because he wanted everyone to use his OS.