Microsoft charged IBM only a one-time fee, the MS-DOS cost only $60, as opposed to $175 for the CP/M and $450 for the UCSD system. Gates and Allen were convinced that if they could establish MS-DOS as the system in greatest use, they could make a great deal of money down the line. Their gamble paid off, and MS-DOS won the battle within a year. What’s more, the first clones were coming out, and Microsoft was poised to cash in. In addition, new software like the Lotus 1-2-3 spreadsheet was created to work with MS-DOS.
But just as Gates and Allen arrived at this moment of triumph, Allen was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease. It was initially thought that he had lymphoma, an often fatal form of cancer, but even the treatment for the much more controllable Hodgkin’s disease would entail twenty-two months of chemotherapy. Although he remained a director of Microsoft and sometimes attended various other meetings, Allen backed off from his commitment to Microsoft during the two years of treatment. When he recovered, he made the decision to go off on his own to do other things. By then he was already a billionaire several times over, and he proved himself to be an astute investor in othercompanies, ranging from Ticketmaster, of which he owns eighty percent, to America Online and many high-tech companies. He bought the NBA Portland Trailblazers and became one of the new owners of the Seattle Mariners, in order to keep the baseball team in Seattle. He gives millions of dollars to charity every year, the beneficiaries ranging from cancer and AIDS research to libraries and the Oregon Shakespeare festival. As a director of Microsoft, he still has official input into shaping the company, but it’s clear that he has a special place as an informal prognosticator and sounding board for Bill Gates, and that the men remain both intellectually and personally close.
----
S oftware companies are forced to gamble on unproved markets because it’s nearly impossible to ask customers to predict whether they’ll buy and use a new kind of tool. Successful software companies push the frontier of what’s possible. We have no choice but to spend all the money to create a product before we sell any—and then hope there’s a big market for it.
—B ILL G ATES , 1997
----
With Paul Allen no longer a major force at Microsoft after his illness struck in 1982, it was up to Bill Gates to continue to build the company into the worldwide behemoth it has become. There are those who say that Paul Allen is a nicer guy than Bill Gates, and that it wouldn’t have been as ruthless a company if Allen had remained with it in his original capacity. But that ignores the fact that Gates was from the start more involved with the business end. And while Gates sometimes snaps back when charged with extreme aggressiveness, and denies many charges made against his company’s business practices, it is obvious he has run it with enormous success.
The first big step Microsoft took without Allen’s active participation was to develop a graphical interface. MS-DOS was character based. Gates explains the difference between the two formats by using a chessboard analogy: one format moves a chess piece by typing in words; the other shows a chessboard on the screen and moves the representation of the chess piece with a mouse. It may seem incredible to young computer users, but it was not until 1984 that the use of the mouse really became popular, with the introduction of Apple’s Macintosh. The technology of the mouse had originally been developed by Xerox, but because of the high cost of their computers, which also didn’t use standard microprocessors, they were unable to achieve market success with this breakthrough.
----
O ur failures tend to result from markets being too small. Microsoft Bob was a product a couple of years ago that used on-screen cartoon characters to carry out tasks for people. Unfortunately, the software demanded more performance
But just as Gates and Allen arrived at this moment of triumph, Allen was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease. It was initially thought that he had lymphoma, an often fatal form of cancer, but even the treatment for the much more controllable Hodgkin’s disease would entail twenty-two months of chemotherapy. Although he remained a director of Microsoft and sometimes attended various other meetings, Allen backed off from his commitment to Microsoft during the two years of treatment. When he recovered, he made the decision to go off on his own to do other things. By then he was already a billionaire several times over, and he proved himself to be an astute investor in othercompanies, ranging from Ticketmaster, of which he owns eighty percent, to America Online and many high-tech companies. He bought the NBA Portland Trailblazers and became one of the new owners of the Seattle Mariners, in order to keep the baseball team in Seattle. He gives millions of dollars to charity every year, the beneficiaries ranging from cancer and AIDS research to libraries and the Oregon Shakespeare festival. As a director of Microsoft, he still has official input into shaping the company, but it’s clear that he has a special place as an informal prognosticator and sounding board for Bill Gates, and that the men remain both intellectually and personally close.
----
S oftware companies are forced to gamble on unproved markets because it’s nearly impossible to ask customers to predict whether they’ll buy and use a new kind of tool. Successful software companies push the frontier of what’s possible. We have no choice but to spend all the money to create a product before we sell any—and then hope there’s a big market for it.
—B ILL G ATES , 1997
----
With Paul Allen no longer a major force at Microsoft after his illness struck in 1982, it was up to Bill Gates to continue to build the company into the worldwide behemoth it has become. There are those who say that Paul Allen is a nicer guy than Bill Gates, and that it wouldn’t have been as ruthless a company if Allen had remained with it in his original capacity. But that ignores the fact that Gates was from the start more involved with the business end. And while Gates sometimes snaps back when charged with extreme aggressiveness, and denies many charges made against his company’s business practices, it is obvious he has run it with enormous success.
The first big step Microsoft took without Allen’s active participation was to develop a graphical interface. MS-DOS was character based. Gates explains the difference between the two formats by using a chessboard analogy: one format moves a chess piece by typing in words; the other shows a chessboard on the screen and moves the representation of the chess piece with a mouse. It may seem incredible to young computer users, but it was not until 1984 that the use of the mouse really became popular, with the introduction of Apple’s Macintosh. The technology of the mouse had originally been developed by Xerox, but because of the high cost of their computers, which also didn’t use standard microprocessors, they were unable to achieve market success with this breakthrough.
----
O ur failures tend to result from markets being too small. Microsoft Bob was a product a couple of years ago that used on-screen cartoon characters to carry out tasks for people. Unfortunately, the software demanded more performance
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