If Bill Gates never existed

[Shrykull]

If there were no Microsoft, do you think Apple would be have the market. What if Bill Gates AND Steve Jobs never existed. Do you Xerox would still have given away the GUI, or would they have maybe realized it was worth something?

[Shrykull]

If there were no Microsoft, do you think Apple would be have the market. What if Bill Gates AND Steve Jobs never existed. Do you Xerox would still have given away the GUI, or would they have maybe realized it was worth something?

It would be interesting. What do you think you'd find if you could travel to a parrallel universe for each?

edit: sorry about that, meant to add it to my original, not add another post.

[DaveJB]

Strictly speaking Bill Gates never existing wouldn't necessarily have prevented Microsoft's formation, since Paul Allen could have formed it by himself. However, let's give this scenario the benefit of the doubt and assume that Allen went into selling insurance instead, so that Microsoft never came to be.

It really would depend on who provided the OS for the first IBM PC back in 1981; IBM may have bitten the bullet and gone with their original choice, CP/M, but given the high price that Digital Research were commanding, that'd probably have been a last resort for them. More likely they would have struck a deal with one of the technology startups that had their own DOS; beyond that it's hard to predict how things would have gone. We might have gotten a horrible POS of a DOS which sank IBM's hopes of making the PC the dominant platform. Then, depending on how willing they were to permit hardware clones, someone like Commodore, Apple or even (shudder) Amstrad might have dominated the personal computer market instead.

[Shrykull]

In Pirates of Silicon Valley, one of the IBM exec's says he didn't care who wrote the OS, as he says the profit was in the computer's themselves, not the software to run them. They'd probably go with whoever would take the least money to do it.

[Solauren]

IIRC there was a operating system called 'IBM PC DOS'.

Maybe that would have been the operating system.

[DaveJB]

PC-DOS was just IBM's proprietary version of MS-DOS - the codebase was still written by Microsoft, but IBM added a few of their own features.

I can't recall the exact reason why IBM didn't develop their PC's operating system in-house, but I think they wanted to avoid spending too much time and effort on creating an OS for a system that had no guarantee of success. Therefore they first approached Digital Research about writing an x86 version of CP/M, but they wanted to charge IBM $300 per copy and refused to consider any sort of exclusivity agreement. Therefore IBM went to Microsoft, who made a much more reasonable offer (still without exclusivity, mind, which ultimately helped the clone market get underway) and the rest is history.

[Uraniun235]

Strictly speaking Bill Gates never existing wouldn't necessarily have prevented Microsoft's formation, since Paul Allen could have formed it by himself. However, let's give this scenario the benefit of the doubt and assume that Allen went into selling insurance instead, so that Microsoft never came to be.

It really would depend on who provided the OS for the first IBM PC back in 1981; IBM may have bitten the bullet and gone with their original choice, CP/M, but given the high price that Digital Research were commanding, that'd probably have been a last resort for them. More likely they would have struck a deal with one of the technology startups that had their own DOS; beyond that it's hard to predict how things would have gone. We might have gotten a horrible POS of a DOS which sank IBM's hopes of making the PC the dominant platform. Then, depending on how willing they were to permit hardware clones, someone like Commodore, Apple or even (shudder) Amstrad might have dominated the personal computer market instead.

Microsoft not existing could have an interesting impact; if I'm reading right, they developed and published a pretty influential version of BASIC, which among other things drove the Commodore computers.

What interests me is the hardware side; if Microsoft's absence leads to the IBM PC being much less successful, x86 might not gain market supremacy (or even survive as long as it has)... so what would have dominated? Would something have even dominated is even more interesting - what if we lived in a PC market split evenly between, say, PowerPC, x86, and Alpha? It strikes me as a potentially ugly environment with regard to program portability, but I'm not a programmer so I might be totally wrong there.

[Marcus Aurelius]

What interests me is the hardware side; if Microsoft's absence leads to the IBM PC being much less successful, x86 might not gain market supremacy (or even survive as long as it has)... so what would have dominated? Would something have even dominated is even more interesting - what if we lived in a PC market split evenly between, say, PowerPC, x86, and Alpha? It strikes me as a potentially ugly environment with regard to program portability, but I'm not a programmer so I might be totally wrong there.

Motorola 68k would have dominated. It was technically superior to the Intel 8086, but for some reason I can't remember right now Intel went for the 8088. Probably it had something to do with cost, as usual. RISC was not really on the table in the early 1980's as far as actual implementations went. If x86 does not succeed, it is highly likely that 68k takes its place in history. PowerPC would probably never be developed or it would be a footnote just like Intel's i960 RISC architecture (which nevertheless was fairly successful in the embedded market).

Or if we are really lucky, MicroVAX/NVAX dominates and DEC* rules the world of IT. I want my VMS! Unix/Linux sucks, Win NT is a cheap copy, VMS rules

[Uraniun235]

What interests me is the hardware side; if Microsoft's absence leads to the IBM PC being much less successful, x86 might not gain market supremacy (or even survive as long as it has)... so what would have dominated? Would something have even dominated is even more interesting - what if we lived in a PC market split evenly between, say, PowerPC, x86, and Alpha? It strikes me as a potentially ugly environment with regard to program portability, but I'm not a programmer so I might be totally wrong there.

Motorola 68k would have dominated. It was technically superior to the Intel 8086, but for some reason I can't remember right now Intel went for the 8088. Probably it had something to do with cost, as usual. RISC was not really on the table in the early 1980's as far as actual implementations went. If x86 does not succeed, it is highly likely that 68k takes its place in history. PowerPC would probably never be developed or it would be a footnote just like Intel's i960 RISC architecture (which nevertheless was fairly successful in the embedded market).

Or if we are really lucky, MicroVAX/NVAX dominates and DEC* rules the world of IT. I want my VMS! Unix/Linux sucks, Win NT is a cheap copy, VMS rules

Were there ever any companies that made 68k chips besides Motorola? (i.e. like AMD and Cyrix for x86) If not, would there be any now that it's the dominant computer CPU? If not, what's going to compete and force Motorola to develop faster and faster chips?


I've never used VMS, what does it offer that other operating systems don't?

[Sarevok]

AMD and cyris only became a serious competitor around late 90s. That did not stop rapid increase in the performence of intel microprocessors in the preceeding years.

[Shogoki]

It wouldn't have meant anything for Apple, even though MS != Bill Gates, with him absent the market would still simply had gone to whoever was the first one to come along with a clone friendly OS backed up by some major manufacturer.

[Marcus Aurelius]

AMD and cyris only became a serious competitor around late 90s. That did not stop rapid increase in the performence of intel microprocessors in the preceeding years.

Depends on what you mean by "serious competitor". Cyrix was never a serious competitor performancewise. AMD became one with the original Athlon (and to a lesser degree already with the K6), but the first commercial success of AMD was their 40 MHz 80386 clone. It provided nearly the same performance as the 25 MHz Intel 80486sx at a much lower price (both processor and system, since it could use older 386 motherboards). This was already in the early 1990's, circa 1993. AMD's 80 MHz 486DX2 and 120 MHz 486DX4 a couple of years later were commercial successes as well.

The real competition to Intel up to 486 were the Motorola 68k series (68040 was clock for clock faster than the 80486, although the latter eventually clocked higher) and the rising RISC processor architectures (in particular MIPS and Alpha, later PowerPC as well). In fact until the Pentium Pro the RISCs were winning and x86 was playing catchup. The Pentium Pro was the first x86 processor that was taken seriously as an engineering workstation processor.

However, in the Personal Computer market the RISCs went really nowhere aside Apple's propietary Macintosh hardware, partially because Apple killed the Mac clones when they started to cut into Apple's profits and Apple never fully committed to an open PowerPC platform anyways. Without an open platform supported by Apple as well, IBM had little incentive to release their planned OS/2 for PowerPC. The Alphas on the other hand lacked a commercially viable desktop operating system, although the actual Alpha hardware was reasonably affordable at one point.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Were there ever any companies that made 68k chips besides Motorola? (i.e. like AMD and Cyrix for x86) If not, would there be any now that it's the dominant computer CPU? If not, what's going to compete and force Motorola to develop faster and faster chips?

As far as I know there were no other 68k compatible chip makers besides Motorola (now Freescale; the ColdFire series is still alive). Well, there was one licensed copy by Phillips.

I've never used VMS, what does it offer that other operating systems don't?

Nothing much by modern standards; I was just being nostalgic. However, in the 1980's and early 1990's VMS was probably the most stable non-mainframe operating system there was. The Unix versions available at the time could not compete. The only viable competition came from IBM System/38 and its later successor OS/400, which however were part of the "Big Blue" machine and not very geek-friendly. Those IBM operating systems were also pretty much minicomputer/server only, whereas VMS could run on everything from workstations to powerful minicomputers and later multiprocessor servers, even if it was originally developed as a minicomputer OS.

[Davey]

Or if we are really lucky, MicroVAX/NVAX dominates and DEC* rules the world of IT. I want my VMS! Unix/Linux sucks, Win NT is a cheap copy, VMS rules

I like this one! Maybe DEC would have had more of an incentive to lower their license fees or promote the hobbyist program some more. If they had designed Alpha to scale to over a thousand times its original performance, I can only wonder what it would be like today.

That does bring the question though, what if the UNIX wars never ended? If everybody, his little brother, his dog, and his cat would be creating their own UNIX once BSD finished their business with AT&T, it'd be a nightmare, with no standardization.

[Drooling Iguana]

Could IBM have simply purchased 86-DOS directly instead of having Microsoft act as middleman?

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

The irony of course was that the demise of the Alpha helped AMD. The Athlon incorporated a number of Alpha-related technologies.

[phongn]

What interests me is the hardware side; if Microsoft's absence leads to the IBM PC being much less successful, x86 might not gain market supremacy (or even survive as long as it has)... so what would have dominated? Would something have even dominated is even more interesting - what if we lived in a PC market split evenly between, say, PowerPC, x86, and Alpha? It strikes me as a potentially ugly environment with regard to program portability, but I'm not a programmer so I might be totally wrong there.

Motorola 68k would have dominated. It was technically superior to the Intel 8086, but for some reason I can't remember right now Intel went for the 8088. Probably it had something to do with cost, as usual. RISC was not really on the table in the early 1980's as far as actual implementations went. If x86 does not succeed, it is highly likely that 68k takes its place in history. PowerPC would probably never be developed or it would be a footnote just like Intel's i960 RISC architecture (which nevertheless was fairly successful in the embedded market).

Intel didn't have the rights to M68K, which at any rate was significantly more sophisticated than i8086. Intel was quite aggressive in getting IBM's business, Motorola not so much. If M68K was the ISA for the IBM PC, I guarantee we would've had a lot fewer growing pains. M68K is cleaner and its memory model far superior to the early x86 machines.

Or if we are really lucky, MicroVAX/NVAX dominates and DEC* rules the world of IT. I want my VMS! Unix/Linux sucks, Win NT is a cheap copy, VMS rules

Maybe we'll get Amiga on the desktop

Were there ever any companies that made 68k chips besides Motorola? (i.e. like AMD and Cyrix for x86) If not, would there be any now that it's the dominant computer CPU? If not, what's going to compete and force Motorola to develop faster and faster chips?

IBM would've demanded (at least) a second source. I suspect that we'd see history repeat itself in the late 1990s with the "race to 1GHz" and such so long as there was a competitive market.

The irony of course was that the demise of the Alpha helped AMD. The Athlon incorporated a number of Alpha-related technologies.

It wasn't just AMD that benefitted from DEC's demise; Intel got a lot of their engineers, too.

Could IBM have simply purchased 86-DOS directly instead of having Microsoft act as middleman?

Yes. Bill Gates was simply savvy enough to license it to IBM rather than outright sell it.

Or if we are really lucky, MicroVAX/NVAX dominates and DEC* rules the world of IT. I want my VMS! Unix/Linux sucks, Win NT is a cheap copy, VMS rules

I like this one! Maybe DEC would have had more of an incentive to lower their license fees or promote the hobbyist program some more. If they had designed Alpha to scale to over a thousand times its original performance, I can only wonder what it would be like today.

DEC designed Alpha to scale - but there were serious problems coming that nobody saw. Remember that NetBurst was designed to scale to 10GHz before hitting the power wall - and Alpha had a similar design philosophy as NetBurst (clock faster for better performance).

That does bring the question though, what if the UNIX wars never ended? If everybody, his little brother, his dog, and his cat would be creating their own UNIX once BSD finished their business with AT&T, it'd be a nightmare, with no standardization.

That would suck greatly, though I suspect the ISVs would force some standardization effort instead of writing their applications for dozens of different UNIXes.

AMD and cyris only became a serious competitor around late 90s. That did not stop rapid increase in the performence of intel microprocessors in the preceeding years.

Depends on what you mean by "serious competitor". Cyrix was never a serious competitor performancewise. AMD became one with the original Athlon (and to a lesser degree already with the K6), but the first commercial success of AMD was their 40 MHz 80386 clone. It provided nearly the same performance as the 25 MHz Intel 80486sx at a much lower price (both processor and system, since it could use older 386 motherboards). This was already in the early 1990's, circa 1993. AMD's 80 MHz 486DX2 and 120 MHz 486DX4 a couple of years later were commercial successes as well.

AMD was running into serious trouble by the time of the K5 in terms of catching up with Intel; they were lucky that they were able to acquire NexGen by way of IBM to produce the K6, and then all of those DEC engineers to produce the K7. They could then capitalize on Intel's mistake with NetBurst when they added the integrated memory controller to K7 to produce K8; they really do require a bit too much luck to stay at the peak of performance - and have never really been able to match Intel on process.

The Alphas on the other hand lacked a commercially viable desktop operating system, although the actual Alpha hardware was reasonably affordable at one point.

NT4 was pretty viable and there was an internal build of W2K for Alpha before Compaq killed the project.

[Marcus Aurelius]

Intel didn't have the rights to M68K, which at any rate was significantly more sophisticated than i8086.

I intended to write IBM, not Intel. Intel of course had nothing to do with the 68000.

NT4 was pretty viable and there was an internal build of W2K for Alpha before Compaq killed the project.

Yes, but there was almost no native software for it. Even OS/2 had more. It could run x86 software with the built-in emulation, but although the performance was not bad, it was not better than native x86 platforms (Pentium and later Pentium Pro & 2).