Bill Gates Talk From 1989 Surfaces 317
70sstar writes "A 1-1/2 hour recording of Bill Gates addressing a crowd of university students in 1989 was recently found and digitized, and has been circulating in some IRC channels for the past few weeks. The speech has found a permanent home on the web page of the University of Waterloo CS Club, where the talk is reported to have taken place. Gates covers the past, present, and future of computing as of 1989. While the former two might be of interest to tech historians, the real fascination is Gates's prediction of computing yet to come. Like the now-legendary '640k' remark, some of his comments are almost laughably off-target ('OS/2 is the way of the future!'). And yet, by and large, he had accurately, chillingly, prophesied an entire decade or two of software and hardware development. All in all, a fascinating talk from one of the most powerful speakers in CS and IT."
OS/2... (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe he was taking the party line (Score:5, Interesting)
Transcript? (Score:4, Interesting)
But (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Shh...poster was being smug! (Score:3, Interesting)
Well... (Score:5, Interesting)
That said, the places where he was wrong are more interesting to me. I wonder what Microsoft's business plan was had IBM taken over with OS/2 instead of them?
Predictions (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Shh...poster was being smug! (Score:5, Interesting)
Gates began programming at age thirteen, at age fourteen he is clearing $20,000 in is first partnership with Allen. Microsoft is founded in 1975. Microsoft in in Japan in 1978. In Europe in 1979. In 1980 Microsoft is young, hungry, and moving a hell of lot faster than Kildall.
Gates-Quotes from a 1990 interview (Score:4, Interesting)
"I think about Handwriting recognition. In two or three years, we may have computers without keyboards. In five or six years this will change, and voice recognition will reduce the importance of graphics."
"In five or six years, DOS [sales] will be overtaken by OS/2."
The he said he is personally using "a Mac II, a Compaq and a IBM" computer, as well as a "NEC-Ultralite".
Re:Shh...poster was being smug! (Score:3, Interesting)
No MS conspiracy required for OS/2 failure (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:eComStation still has superior technology (Score:5, Interesting)
Windows has a hard time doing that these days, and Linux is travelling in that direction (at least in terms of the mainstream distros, which seem to have abandoned legacy hardware support for eye candy).
Re:OS/2... (Score:3, Interesting)
That's why Adobe Photoshop for Windows 3.04 runs just fine under OS/2 Warp 4's WinOS2 subsystem but Adobe Photoshop 3.05 fails, for example. The only thing which changed between those two releases (besides a few fixes) was the move from WIN32S.DLL 1.25a to WIN32S.DLL 1.30.
Re:OS/2... (Score:3, Interesting)
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/308259 [microsoft.com]
Re:OS/2... (Score:2, Interesting)
If I could find my copy , I would give names of course. Apologies.
Re:OS/2... (Score:3, Interesting)
http://fringe.davesource.com/Fringe/NonZen_Compan
Re:We're not in lala-land here (Score:3, Interesting)
It was a very interesting week. One question that came up early was, "that's great, but is it going to be another Apple ][, where we have to try and sell people a computer that won't do anything unless they write their own software?" Yes, I know, at that point the Apple ][ was already well-established but when it was first released it really had little application support. However, the IBM folks pointed to a shelf full of business software that they had already had ported to their new machine. BPI and Peachtree accounting, a couple of word processors and a bunch of other stuff. Smart, very smart.
So, in combination with the magic letters IBM and plenty of common business apps including mainframe terminal emulation, it was hard not to sell the things. And this was when the only video out available was the IBM Monochrome Display and Printer Adapter! The original CGA card followed fairly quickly but we still sold a ton of those things with just the original green monochrome text-only display. It was all that businesses needed back then.
The Apple grew out of the needs of the original hacker community, where everyone wrote their own software, and developed into a serviceable business system because developers jumped on-board and provided the applications software. IBM recognized this need, and made sure that there were enough good apps out for the PC before they even announced its existence. Some of them were rough ports, in a couple of cases obvious conversions from well-known Apple ][ software. But that didn't matter: business wanted an IBM computer system and it had programs that worked. End of story.
I worked at a game development house in the mid-eighties: that company developed the original graphics demonstration that was shipped with every Commodore Amiga. I didn't get to write code for it, as a matter of fact it had no native development tools and the two guys that were coding for it had to work on a couple of Sparcs (the two machines were in a room with an electronic lock, nobody was allowed in, all very hush-hush.) The prototype Amiga 1000's came in hand-built plywood cases, and didn't even have a power-on/reset circuit.
Anyway, as impressive a platform as the Amiga was, from both a hardware and operating system perspective, it suffered from a distinct lack of applications and an even more distinct lack of marketing. Commodore could have taken the lead and blown everyone else out of the water, but they apparently made the mistake of assuming that technological superiority would carry the day. It didn't then, and it doesn't now
I remember their one TV ad, where the sonorous announcer's voice said, "Only Amiga makes it possible." Makes what possible. The ad didn't say, and really was more confusing than anything else.
Re:OS/2... (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, I would buy your argument, but one of the main reasons Windows was as successful as it was in the development world in the early 1990s was based on the fact it was the most centralized and easiest OS to develop for at the time.
This includes the largest and most encompassing abstracted driver support for developers, making the concepts of Video, Sound, and Printing an agnostic concept for developers.
Windows is like the melting pot of development, in that anyone that can drag a textbox on a form can write an application and someone with a beginners knowledge can easily mimic what was seen as complex applications of the late 80s and early 90s rather easily.
I'm not saying that the VB mentality of Windows development is always a good thing, but it allows simple IT people to knock out functional software that meets their particular needs.
I can remember working with EDS several years back and they designed a full set of assembly-line diagnostic tools for GM/Delco using VB. This was a fairly complex and large scale project that they were able to bring to testing in a matter of weeks.
And although it was not a realtime system in the true sense, it did provide realtime features that met their plant's needs quite well. So next time you turn up your Bose sound system in a Vette, you might want to give a shout out to Windows and VB.
This would be far easier to debate if the standard development tools in other OSes all looked like Kylix and were more agnostic about the variant they were running on.