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Cyhist Jul 20 1996 A
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Date: Sat, 20 Jul 1996 23:05:14 -0700
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From: Community Memory To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org" Subject: CM> "Vaporware" & MS-DOS.
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Subject: the vapors
To my suggestion that Microsoft is most often
pointed to as a vaporware-meister, John Clarke
wrote "Jonny come lately's if you ask me"--
and no doubt he's right. But if I'm remembering
the New Yorker's profile of Gates some while
back, hasn't the tale now passed into legend
about how Gates and his partner told IBM
that they had an operating system ready for
their forthcoming PC, and that it just needed
a little tinkering... and then wrote DOS in a
matter of months, thus getting in on the
ground floor with a non-existant product, and
deterring IBM from looking elsewhere?
Considering the role of DOS in the history of
personal computing, that's a central example
of vaporware. Or is this apocryphal, a bit of
spin by Gates to make himself seem more
swashbuckling in hindsight?
--Sam Pratt (this story is for New York Mag,
btw)
______________________________________________________________________
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From: Community Memory To: "Multiple recipients of list cpsr-history@cpsr.org" Subject: CM> "Vaporware" & MS-DOS.
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Sender: Ersatzzz@aol.com
Subject: the vapors
To my suggestion that Microsoft is most often
pointed to as a vaporware-meister, John Clarke
wrote "Jonny come lately's if you ask me"--
and no doubt he's right. But if I'm remembering
the New Yorker's profile of Gates some while
back, hasn't the tale now passed into legend
about how Gates and his partner told IBM
that they had an operating system ready for
their forthcoming PC, and that it just needed
a little tinkering... and then wrote DOS in a
matter of months, thus getting in on the
ground floor with a non-existant product, and
deterring IBM from looking elsewhere?
Considering the role of DOS in the history of
personal computing, that's a central example
of vaporware. Or is this apocryphal, a bit of
spin by Gates to make himself seem more
swashbuckling in hindsight?
--Sam Pratt (this story is for New York Mag,
btw)
______________________________________________________________________
