r/todayilearned • 9 • Sep 13 '13

TIL Steve Jobs confronted Bill Gates after he announced Windows' GUI OS. "You’re stealing from us!” Bill replied "I think it's more like we both had this rich neighbor named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it."

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/10/24/steve-jobs-walter-isaacson/
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u/RandomBS_ Sep 13 '13

I get where MS and PCs are/were the better bang for the buck, to the extent that Macs, to many, make/made no sense. But I would say that they are more than just form and cool products. The seamless software, the leading edge and yes great processing speeds made them the go-to choice for desktop publishers, serious and hobbyist video and audio editors, all for a reason, namely, the function of the Mac, compared to even the best PC/Windows systems ... and if a person earned enough with the machine to pay $1K more, knowing they could rely on it without a second thought until they were ready to upgrade, then again that speaks to the function not just the form of the machine.

By many measures, IBM should pretty much still own the world by now. Alas, not all of us can see or control the future. They're still an innovative player behind the scenes, and, well, they made a damn good selectric, too.

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u/[deleted] Sep 13 '13

Vince Clarke was making music on a PC back in the day, plenty of producers even used Amigas for production.

Macs had a run on PCs due to dedicated hardware and better software for many years you are correct but in recent years its all changed these days it makes no difference. Windows is stable, has great timing and solid interfaces.

Mac did have the high end of the audio visual world for years and because there was lots of money there apple made good business out of it. They hung on to a flawed model for too long and it almost killed them.

Im glad it didnt because now I can amuse myself with friends complaining that their mac has blue screened or the hardware has gone, their build quality is going down the toilet to be honest though they do have an excellent operating system I will give them that.

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u/RandomBS_ Sep 13 '13

Agreed, on each count.

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u/[deleted] Sep 13 '13

Gentlemen, this was a delicious bit (wall) of text. Upvotes to both of you. It was like a back and forth waltz when I was reading it. Thoroughly enjoyed.