Reborn Tech Maniac

Chapter 688 Worried about the loss of use value of Microsoft

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After embracing IBM's thigh and becoming the official operating system supplier of IBM-PC, Microsoft's development path is not smooth.

First of all, this deal is a one-time buyout. IBM will not pay Gates copy-by-copy according to its own personal computer shipments. Microsoft's real income comes from the BASIC pre-installed on each IBM-PC, and the IBM-PC Unexpected MS-DOS licensing fees brought about by the rise of compatible machines.

Secondly, IBM has always hoped that Microsoft, a small thing, will develop an operating system for itself honestly, and not half-heartedly put resources on other software to carry out so-called development and growth; Gates certainly does not want his ambitions to be suppressed in this way— —The conflict between the two companies has never stopped.

In addition, competition from peers often makes Microsoft overwhelmed and embarrassed.

The first enemy is the digital research company. Gary Kildare, a Seattle fellow who had a close relationship with Gates earlier, believed that IBM's cooperation should belong to his own CP/M, and then launched a revenge operation.

The roots of MS-DOS came from CP/M, so it was naturally difficult to technically match CP/M-86, which wanted to counterattack.If it weren't for Gary Kildare's poor market operation skills and his insistence on high prices, it is still unclear who will win the battle for operating systems on the IBM-PC platform.

If Digital Research Corporation and Gary Kildare are old-timers in the industry, and it is natural for Microsoft and Gates to be on the verge of a major enemy, then Lotus Software, which was only established in 1982, has suddenly emerged and swept everything, which is very interesting.

Microsoft's spreadsheet software MultiPlan was beaten to the ground by lotus1-2-3, and its office software product line was completely continued by Excel on Apple's MAC platform.

It has to be said that Gates is a lucky contender.Even if he is at a disadvantage, as long as he resists and does not make low-level mistakes, the opponents will basically be dazzled by the temporary victory, and then they will fall so hard that they can't find their front teeth.

After the success of Lotus 1-2-3, it took advantage of the situation to expand its product line and entered the field of enterprise workflow application software with more stable and lucrative profits, thereby breaking the barriers of hardware platforms and colliding with the philosophers who had already been entrenched there.

Lotus1-2-3 uses its own naming to promote its three major functions, namely spreadsheets, chart generation, and database management, but in fact the latter two are decorations, and only spreadsheets are practical.Even so, Lotus1-2-3 became a smash hit by relying solely on its spreadsheet functions.

However, when confronted with Zheru, Mitchell Kapoor realized that Lotus 1-2-3's background was insufficient, so he decided to follow Zheru's example of integrating various office software including spreadsheets, word processing, and databases. mode, developed its own Lotus application suite.

Creativity is sometimes not so valuable. Without strong execution, it will still be a castle in the air.

Office application suites are not so easy to implement. First of all, it needs a unified architecture to realize the communication of various programs, and then involves similar ComponentObjectModel in the original space-time - Component Object Model is COM, CommonObjectRequestBrokerArchitecture - Common Object Request Broker Architecture is CORBA and other software component interface technologies.

As a result, Lotus Software Company fell into the quagmire of stagnant product development, and new products could not be launched for a long time, and then lost the momentum of rapid development before, so that various software companies that had products on the IBM-PC platform were at a loss for a long time. Take a breath.

Although Mitchell Kapoor is the founder of Lotus Software, he does not have the status that Tang Huan is to Zheru and Gates is to Microsoft. He depends on venture capital and is naturally responsible for poor management. Similarly, quitting the company he founded, fortunately, he was much more respectable than Jobs when he left Lotus Software.

Without the founder of Mitchell Kapoor, Lotus Software may have lost a bit of flashes in technology, but the level of capital operation has been enhanced. Through the acquisition of several companies, the thin product line has been quickly enriched.

Gates is aware of this, so he still dare not take Lotus Software lightly.

But just when he could barely breathe a sigh of relief, another aggressive software company, Borland, began to emerge and threatened Microsoft's position on the IBM-PC platform.

In this time and space, although Borland did not have the genius of Anders Helsberger to join from the very beginning, even without TurboPASCAL low-price dumping to provide primitive capital accumulation, even the right to name the product "Turbo" was virtually deprived. Yes, but its founder, Philippe Kahn, Philippe Kahn, also has the characteristics of a passionate, talented, and energetic entrepreneur.

Under the leadership of Philip Kahn, Borland launched a text editing software called SideKick. Once it was launched, it sold hundreds of thousands of sets worldwide and became a best-selling software, helping the company to gain both fame and fortune, and to gain a foothold in the highly competitive market. Stand firm.

Compared with similar products, the main feature of SideKick is that it integrates practical gadgets such as schedules, calculators, automatic dialing, ASCII tables, etc.

For example, when programmers write assembly language codes through SideKick, they can conveniently use a hotkey to invoke ASCII table queries, or convert the calculator between binary, decimal and hexadecimal.

Logically speaking, the IT industry has never been short of geniuses. Impressive ideas, technologies, companies, and products emerge almost every month. SideKick is nothing more than a best-selling software, nothing special, but the vigilant Gates Still found the threat of Borland.

It turns out that SideKick can easily call out various integrated practical gadgets through a hotkey, and hides a technology called Terminate and stay resident program - memory resident program or TSR.

The so-called TSR, specifically, is that after the software using this technology is executed, it will be hidden in a certain location in the memory, and usually will not appear on the screen at the initial stage.However, the user can use a shortcut key to call it up and use it immediately. After finishing, the user can use a shortcut key to hide it again.

With Tang Huan around, TSR is certainly nothing new in the industry, but Borland was the first to successfully introduce this technology to the IBM-PC platform, which immediately caused a sensation.

You know, after the launch of the IBM-PC/AT using the Intel 80286 microprocessor, the IBM-PC platform has the hardware foundation to achieve multi-tasking, but Microsoft's operating system MS-DOS is not capable of providing such support. You can get what you want on the Fangyuan PC platform.

However, after TSR was transplanted to the IBM-PC platform, it created a false impression of multitasking execution for users, which became a major selling point, and other software developers followed suit, forming a wave of TSR software boom.

It is entirely conceivable that how many hotkeys can be combined with a Ctrl key plus other keys, and they will soon be divided up by TSR programs that suddenly come in a spring breeze overnight and thousands of pear trees bloom, resulting in hotkey conflicts.

More importantly, the memory management mechanism of IBM-PC and MS-DOS is not "relative coordinates" but "absolute coordinates". System drivers, etc.

When thousands of TSR programs flood into this small space and scramble for positions, more and more serious conflicts will definitely occur, giving the already unstable MS-DOS an extra gorgeous excuse to crash .

Seeing this chaos, as the pioneer of TSR technology on the IBM-PC platform, Philip Kahn felt that his Borland should stand up and become a leader in order to formulate a TSR specification that everyone abides by, so that TSR programs can run better.

But just as Philip Kahn raised his arms and shouted, waiting for the crowd to gather, he was attacked by Microsoft brutally.

Because the formulation of the TSR standard will touch the lower-level InterruptVectorTable of the IBM-PC platform - the interrupt vector table is the IVT, which is equivalent to a one-dimensional array that stores 256 interrupt service program entry addresses.

To some extent, MS-DOS is the packaging of the interrupt vector table with the ultimate goal of portability and practicality. The importance of the interrupt vector table is self-evident.

Now, Philip Kahn jumped out all of a sudden, bluffing to move the interrupt vector table, and Gates suddenly blew up - what does Borland want to do, does it want to replace Microsoft?
In order to block Borland's ambitious plan, Gates once again used the same trick he used against challenger VisiOn during the IBM-PC platform graphical user interface battle.

He declared: Microsoft will soon launch a new version of MS-DOS, providing a new mechanism similar to TSR.

The effect of this smoke bomb was obvious. TSR applications quickly cooled down. The attitude of third-party software developers tended to be conservative, and Borland's TSR standard was also left out in the cold.

In the end, the result of this TSR boom was anticlimactic.

After all, TSR's real energy is still quite limited, so it's not wrong to be so short-lived.

However, Microsoft and Borland have formed a feud over this, and the focus of the battle has recently shifted to the field of programming tools for the IBM-PC platform.

In addition to BASIC, Microsoft also has C, FORTRAN, and PASCAL in the product line, which were also part of the original IBM order.

And Philip Kahn was very discerning, purchased BASIC and C programming tools from outside Borland, packaged them, and launched them under the names of Borland BASIC and Borland C, which was a great success.The latter, in particular, is extremely popular.

In this operation process, Philip Kahn's brilliance is once again reflected.He also played a rule challenger in software licensing, that is, allowing users to have multiple copies, as long as only one copy is guaranteed to run at a time, which makes the software license agreement extremely simple and clear.

Programmers are often full of personality. They hate the complicated software license agreement full of legal provisions. It is too troublesome to glance at it. But Borland's clean and neat, it is really popular.

In this way, Microsoft was forced to be embarrassed and exhausted by Borland just like the passiveness of Lotus Software during the spreadsheet software war.

Therefore, when Tang Huan suggested that Microsoft should protect its own territory first, Gates was speechless.

When he put down the phone, Steve Ballmer asked, "How was it going?"

"Don said, don't worry, let Microsoft deal with Borland's competition first." Gates replied with a slight frown.

"Microsoft BASIC becoming the macro programming language of Zheru's office software is a matter that involves a lot of things. It is impossible to discuss it once. It is good that Tang does not expressly reject it. We'd better find him face-to-face for public relations." Steve · Ballmer didn't think much, and suggested casually.

"I'm worried that with Tang, Microsoft has no use value." Gates analyzed with a heavy tone: "So, Tang really has no intention of handing over this benefit to Microsoft."

Steve Ballmer touched the top of his head that was beginning to lose his hair due to the company's pressure, and said bitterly: "We can't get involved in the ongoing personal computer standard war. The advantages of the Fangyuan computer standard are becoming more and more obvious. Naturally, Microsoft can no longer continue to use the IBM-PC chip to add value to itself. Moreover, because of the existence of Windows, we and IBM are increasingly at odds."

"IBM's layout on personal computers is stupid, of course we have to keep back." Gates waved his hand without regret, "Don's proposal is not unreasonable, we must first protect our own territory. It is rumored that Borland will extend its tentacles to the fields of spreadsheets and databases, and Microsoft does not have any reserves in databases, so it seems that the most direct way must be adopted to make up for the shortcomings by acquiring a related company.”

Steve Ballmer agreed with Gates' idea, and said: "There are many excellent DBase-compatible database management systems on the market, anyway, DBase can't enjoy the copyright alone, so we simply acquire an excellent compatible company. "

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(End of this chapter)