you know.
If you miss what's happening then the same kind of
thing that happened to IBM
or many other companies could happen to
Microsoft very easily.
So no-one's got a guaranteed position in the high
technology business, and the more you think about,
you know, how could we move faster, what could
we do better,
are there good ideas out there that we should be
going beyond, it's important.
And I wouldn't trade places with anyone, but the
reason I like my job so much is
that we have to constantly stay on top of
those things.
The Windows software system that ended the alliance
between Microsoft and IBM
pushed Gates past all his rivals.
Microsoft had been working on the software for
years, but it wasn't until 1990 that they finally
came up with a version that not only worked
properly, it blew their rivals away,
and where did the idea for this software come from?
Well not from Microsoft, of course.
It came from the hippies at Apple.
Lights! Camera! Boot up! In 1984, they made a
famous TV commercial.
Apple had set out to create the first user-friendly
PC just as IBM and Microsoft
were starting to make a machine for businesses.
When the TV commercial aired, Apple launched
the Macintosh.
The computer and the commercial were aimed
directly at IBM
which the kids in Cupertino thought of as
Big Brother.
But Apple had targeted the wrong people.
It wasn't Big Brother they should have been worrying
about, it was big Bill Gates.
subtitles by fabiusX
subs@fabiushouseThe story so far,
In 1980, just four years after being founded
in a Californian garage,
Apple was the biggest maker of PCs in the world.
Computer giant IBM was not amused and fought back,
launching its own PC in 1981.
Though built from copy-cat technology,
IBM's PC was an enormous hit and spawned many imitators,
the PC clones.
But PCs were still a pain to use.
A revolution was needed to make them friendlier.
Now, view on.
Ladies and gentlemen welcome to the launch of Windows 95.
Yes, welcome Microsoftees nice to have you all here.
But now let's welcome the chairman of Microsoft.
Listen to this. This is a man, a man so successful
his chaffeur is Ross Perot ladies and gentlemen...
please welcome Bill Gates.
It's August 24th, 1995.
In a suburb of Seattle in the Pacific Northwest,
this is the biggest, noisiest product launch
in the history of the personal computer.
It's Windows 95 software - and Bill Gates is the star, chairman,
chief nerd and spiritual leader of Microsoft.
This is the latest step in Bill's dream to have
his software running on every PC in the world.
Bill Gates: We wanted people to be able to appreciate
how Windows 95 makes computing
faster, easier and more fun.
And for seven years it was a lonely, lonely crusade...
this moves the whole PC industry up to a whole new level...
Wait a minute all this publicity is so Bill Gates
can claim that Windows 95 is the latest
and perhaps the most significant improvement
in the PC since it was invented.
He can say that his new operating system makes PC's
nicer to look at and easier to use than ever before.
They'll no longer be just for geeks and nerds they'll be
so easy to use that even my mother will want one...
but you know what - most of the ideas in Windows 95
were invented twenty years ago.
The 20 year journey to this software celebration hasn't been easy.
It has involved huge gambles,
passionate commitment, dramatic setbacks
and required the occasional crushing of rivals and allies.
It's the triumph of Bill Gates' commercial vision.
Success in the market place doesn't have to come
from innovation, or from being the best,
if you have a ruthless ability to exploit your opportunities.
And the way Microsoft made the PC's graphical user interface
its own is a textbook example of that ability.
Time for another Cringely crash course in elementary computing.
In the early days of personal computing
the machines were pretty hard to use
in part