[TriLUG] even more interesting

[rpjday]

On Thu, 8 Nov 2001, Matt Jezorek wrote:

> Yes this is true, the IBM clone did alot of this work as well but what was
> distributed on them.
> MS DOS was easier to use then Unix at the time. Unix was running on the
> mainframes and this and that.
> Now mind you IBM had a DOS too. But IBM DOS  was not as big in my eyes as
> far as usage.  Do you
> think that if DOS was not invented, or any of the MS products where invented
> would the desktop market
> be as big as it is today? We (the consumer) would be stuck with Unix or OS2
> i believe it was and I dont think
> the desktop market would be as big.

there's a great anecdote in robert x cringely's book "accidental empires"
that, when ibm was looking around for an os, they *first* stopped by
to visit gary kildall, to check out cpm.  sadly, kildall had decided to
blow off his visitors and go fly his plane.  so since he was nowhere
to be found, the ibm'ers went to plan b -- bill gates.

if it weren't for kildall's stunningly bad decision, this might have
been a cpm world.  who knows?

rday