Happy 41st Birthday Apple Macinstosh!

The Satellite
21

Coming back to the thread Steve Jobs changed the way we live. How many people can say that? Some might debate if it is for the better.
One thing though is that you now (been a while) you can run outlook in Apple platforms.

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22

Yes, but tell me where the facts cited are in error and/or facts that are omitted ?

Often the best interest to settle and move on. Very common practice used by many companies.

I don’t know. But stick to facts mentioned
or facts omitted that would bolster your claim Gates is a thief. That’s a very strong claim to make.

I don’t know about the “prince” thing you talk. I know he was very tough business man and hands on coder. As I said, I’m in the profession and work with many vendors
IBM, HP, Redhat, Seagate, Western Digital, Intel, Dell, and dozens of others. I honestly can’t say there was any consensus among them about Gates being a “thief”. Lots of people despised him for his success and dominance. But that’s just personal opinions. Personally I hate all GUIs as they are all so limiting and restrictive. CLI 99% and GUI usage 1% of time when dealing with thousands of servers for compute and storage.

But please share more facts or articles that support your position. I would enjoy reading them.

23

Yep. Gates is a thief and Jobs is a genius when they both incorporated that into their products. Sheesh.

I don’t care if you like Gates or Jobs or neither, but they both did cut throat tactics and built products on similar ideas that were started by someone else.

But really, we owe a lot to “theft” in the computer space at that time. Compaq, RadioShack, and others all cloned IBM.

Silicon Cowboys is a good documentary about those days of Compaq computer. Also a fun, fictional series around early computer development you can find streaming is Halt and Catch Fire.

24

Chris, I don’t follow this at all. Can you explain why you think purchasing non voting shares means something nefarious?

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Did you read the article Dustin? gates had to settle and invest $150m’s then with no voting shares ir access to them. Which company in their right mind would do that during the legal proceedings if gates was not guilty?

26

Chris,
150 million was chump change to microsoft at the time in 1997. I’m sure Apple didn’t want MS having any control in their company going forward.
Also note Apple agreed to make IE the default browser on their platform. Why would Jobs settle for that if he wasn’t guilty :wink:

1997 settlement

  • Microsoft agreed to continue developing Microsoft Office and other software for the Mac.
  • Microsoft purchased $150 million of nonvoting Apple stock.
  • Apple agreed to make Internet Explorer its default browser.
  • Both parties entered into a patent cross-licensing agreement.
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27

So as part of a settlement, he had to give them money and in return he got some non voting stock? I mean sounds like a great negotiation. Having the stock (even if non voting) very likely paid for the settlement and more in the long term.

Though I did look at the article and it doesn’t indicate Microsoft “had to” settle as you suggested. The article says that Apple was cash strapped at the time so they may have been desperate to settle, so they were willing to give up stock as part of it. If either company “had to” settle, it was likely Apple purely for financial reasons and not anything to do with guilt.

Maybe I’m missing something but I think Microsoft gaining non voting stock as part of the settlement was a win win. It ended the lawsuit, got Apple much needed cash infusion, Apple didn’t give up any control (which they may have had to do to get that kind of investment elsewhere), and Microsoft got what we know now was very appreciable stock. Would love to know what kind of capital gain Microsoft eventually realized on that stock.

Let me ask you this, if all the facts were the same except the stock came with voting rights, would that change your interpretation? If so, why?

28

Found this from source (non verified fyi)


as of the terms of the deal, Microsoft had to hold on to the shares for at least three years. Then, in 2002, it started selling its Apple stock again, and got rid of its entire stake by the middle of 2003. In total, it netted Microsoft around $550 million. That’s a healthy 260% gain in just six years.

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29

I wish I could be that guilty.

30

My first computer in college back in 1990 was a MAC SE/30 with a 9 inch monochrome screen.

Got me through college and my first year of law school.

I’ve had my current MacBook Pro since 2014. Still going strong!

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