Question about Bill Gates
I was reading a portuguese book that has a few memories from former Timex engineers, and one of them mentioned that when someone asked Bill Gates if he believed Microsoft was the company who brought computers to the average home user, his reply was that it wasn't Microsoft, but Sinclair (in the U.K.), and Timex (in the U.S.). Has anyone heard something like this before?
Post edited by zxbruno on
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Yeah, right after I re-read your post, but not before I finished this sentence.
Skarpo
:-?
Sinclair did for Europe what the Apple did for USA.
Good luck! Bring me back a thigh bone!
I'm thinking that even if it is in the book it would still be a bit of Timex propaganda.
nuff said
My fav bit of gos is around who invented the first GUI.
XEROX. Aparently Xerox were making a nice icon based interface for something or other anyway Steve and Bill went visiting one day, and within months windows and mac os were born.
But im interested where the Amiga came from......... (Area 51 no doubt)
But really if you think about it Clive was years ahead of the game, no so much with the idea of a home computer, but one that was used in the living room...
If it does become the next big thing (living room pc's), its only taken 25 year for Bill and steve to catch up...:D
Never thought of that.
I don’t think I have the stomach for it.
--Raziel (Legend of Kain: Soul Reaver 2)
https://www.youtube.com/user/VincentTSFP
Apple? Hardly any sold in the homes. They were mainly bought by schools and businesses. Have a look at this for market share comparisons in the US. There were many more TRS-80s, Ataris and PETs around as shown by those numbers (and fit my experience). But the '70s was not the home computer period -- that was still the period of hobbyists. For home computers, you'd have to say it was the C64 in the states.
However, the impact of the zx81 in the US is highly underrated in the states, mainly because most computer users (as opposed to hobbyists) bought computers after the early history had already played out and have never heard of Sinclair or Timex. One should keep in mind that for a brief period Sinclair and Timex were outselling all other manufacturers combined 3:1, and were probably the first to sell a million in the US (the VIC-20 sold a million a month before the TS1000, but put together the TS1000 and zx81 and perhaps there's a different statistic).
It's my opinion that the TS1000 / zx81 found the price where home buyers would give it a whirl. Prior to them computers sold in a (relative) trickle, being priced in the $600 - $1000 area. With them in the market, manufacturers chopped prices to reach those buyers and the home computer boom was born. The unfortunate thing was Timex did not have a Spectrum available for home users as the TS1000 was totally wrong for them. They basicallly wanted to play games and when getting a TS1000 were sorely disappointed.
Write games in C using Z88DK and SP1
He gives the quote as:
"it wasn't me or Microsoft who created the cultural change allowing the computer to go home. it was Sinclair and Timex." Bill Gates
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8pVcfWmmjo
I was suprised to not see the quote mentioned or questioned in the comments there. It is presented as a direct quote but undated. It is presented with British-style double quote marks (not American-style single quotes, or Portuguese-style angular ones). Which seems slightly curious for repeating an American as quoted in a Portuguese book..
Does anybody know more? (Or have a youtube account to attract the attention of the youtuber to this post?). I'd love to know more about this fun quote.
As an aside: I have been corrected by people from America on the wos forum before, for asserting sinclar was relatively unknown over there. Every reason to suspect Microsoft noticed what was going on. We do know Microsoft tried to sell Microsoft BASIC and DOS to Sinclair more than once, since they tried seperately for the ZX and QL machines. We also know he was directly involved in promoting the MSX, which was Microsoft of Japans attempt at a consolidation of all the various ZX inspired machines that started popping up from every tech company over there after the ZX machines were first exported to Japan. The first SEGA home machines had rubber keyboards and colour clash for pete's sake. He failed to make the speccy a Microsoft box, and jumped at the chance to make their own: a Z80 complete with colour-clash mode, MS-DOS compatible MSX-DOS ported by the original programmer, and MS-BASIC integral to the standard. It seems unlikely Gates wouldn't know the names-of or danger-posed-by his competitiors. Or worry about paying them respect when they were no longer a threat. He clearly quite liked the look of the market sector sinclair created.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqtTFvtM6JM
Meh
*later-edit* Plus this following American mentions how his Timex-Sinclair sales are changing the landscape and kicking ass in America, early on, in his talk. (Of course, sinclair had Nigel Searle, and was direct selling ZX stuff in America for a while before Timex took over the franchise with their versions)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBsxK2yLyGo