Microsoft: The first day of trouble and vision of Bill Gates

Today, PCs have become so familiar with our lives. There are many factors that have made the PC popular, familiar and widespread. One of them is windows, the most popular OS on personal computers today.

As everyone knows, windows is a product of the leading technology company: Microsoft. Maybe Gates , Microsoft, windows are idols of many of us but do you know the history, past events that affect the vision, strategy and characteristics (about the product? , people .) of the company in the present time. Join us in looking back at the past and the history of the company to find the answer.

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Overview of Microsoft history

It would be meaningless if we spent too many words to talk about the history of Microsoft because you can find it anywhere (if you want to learn more, please refer here (English) or here ( Vietnamese).

In general, Microsoft multidisciplinary, multinational companies produce high-tech related products. Microsoft is the world's largest technology firm until mid-2010 - when Apple took over. Microsoft works in many areas: software, hardware (Xbox, home entertainment devices), PC games (AOE, Halo), online advertising (Bing) . However, important products The company's most influential, still the world's number one operating system: Windows.

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In two co-founders, Bill Gates is a more famous name, having a greater influence on Microsoft's development. Bill Gates for many years kept the richest man on the planet. He has now left his full-time job at Microsoft to spend time with the charity led by him and his wife.

The beginning period

When Bill Gates gave up his Harvard third year student card and founded Microsoft with Paul Allen in April 1975, both stepped into one of the greatest and most adventurous adventures in technology history. Gates and Allen's first project and the Altair - the device they later described as " the first representative of the PC world ". The task of both of you (and Microsoft at first) is to write Basic translation software for the Altair 8800 .

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Shortly thereafter, the cooperation that later changed the world took place: IBM and Microsoft began to attack the personal computer market. While IBM was already a big company, owning important inventions, Microsoft was still a small company with a few employees. Gates bought 86-DOS from Seattle Computer Products, renamed and created one of the most familiar operating systems for us MS-DOS (IBM called PC-DOS). Under agreements with IBM, Microsoft kept the MS-DOS license in 1981 and sold it to IBM for $ 6 per copy.

See Bill Gates

Many admire Bill Gates is not Bill Gates' technical and programming talent, although he has been the chief architect of Microsoft for a long time, it is a vision, accurate ability to worthy decisions and opportunities.

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The first thing that led to this observation was that he bravely left his chair one of the most prestigious universities in the world. Perhaps there is no need to say much more about Harvard, the oldest and most respected 400-year-old school in the United States. According to statistics in the past year, only 7.1% of applicants (record low numbers) were accepted to study here. Bill Gates dropped out of his studies in his third year, which means that in about 1 to 2 years he will have a degree that any student in the world wants.

Why? That's because he saw the tremendous potential of the PC market, more specifically the PC OS market. At the time, when PCs were expensive, heavy and hard-to-use machines, did anyone think it would soon become as small and popular as it is today? Anyone think will sell (even sell a lot) software royalties for machines that only appear in dreams? Probably not many people. Even the geniuses of IBM (the largest PC maker) a few years later did not see this potential when they accepted to let Microsoft and Bill Gates keep Windows rights.

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Some people up until this point still think that Bill Gates' drop-out stories are an excessive image. The main point for them to make this judgment is his family. From this point of view, the fact that Bill Gates quits school is not really "horrible" because his family is in "conditional" form: his father is a famous lawyer, his mother is a member of the bank's board of directors, grandfather is the president of a national bank. The fact that he dropped out of school if he failed, Gates completely had a way out.

The same is true, but from a different perspective, does the pressure of a prestigious family like Gates' family make him more pressured? Do you underestimate a person who dares to give up the world's most prestigious university degree? Are you brave to refuse to become the director of the division of one of the world's largest companies then? The answer lies in you.

Another unknown point about Gates' ability to " look ahead " is in the final years of the 9xs. At the same time, he spoke of a "desktop computer with power" and a model of them. Yes, the device I want to mention is the tablet. Most of us think the tablet came into being since Steve Jobs took it on WWDC 2010 but since the beginning of 2000, Gates has introduced a similar product. However, technology was not enough to realize his idea, so Microsoft failed.

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One more thing that proved Bill Gates' vision and importance to Microsoft was when he left his job at the largest software company on the planet. During the period Bill Gates also holds the absolute role of chief engineer at Microsoft, Windows versions always outperform rivals (including Mac) in technology, features, compatibility . At that time No one doubts its adaptability to market changes.

The time of 2005 2006 when Bill Gates no longer focused 100% effort on work at Microsoft, immediately, he saw the importance of him. Windows Vista debuted, Windows 8 was slow in the market, IE 8 became a disappointing version, Office of new releases was appreciated but not superior, losing the number one position. the world . It seems that Microsoft is going through the post-Bill Gates extremely difficult period.

Even if IE 9, Windows Phone 7, Office 2010 . are appreciated, I don't see it as an outstanding, ahead of its time like what Windows 3.0, Windows 95 or closer is Windows XP. - products bearing Bill Gates' mark.