November 6, 1980 is remembered as the day on which Ibm made a deal with the devil. But in fact, that was the day IBM thought it had won the war for the personal computer market and Bill Gates won instead.
We have already told of the secret meeting in Florida between the co-founder of Microsoft and an IBM team that had the task of developing the first PC of the Armonk company; and how with a flicker Gates convinced them to choose the Microsoft operating system that wasn’t there yet. The agreement was signed a few months later, on November 6, 1980. It foresaw that Microsoft would create an operating system for the future IBM PC; the fact is that Microsoft did not yet have an operating system, but he had chosen to license that of a small Seattle startup that had one.
In July 1981 he bought that operating system, a few weeks before the launch of the IBM PC that worked thanks to a Pc-Dos. It was a huge success, not only for IBM but for the entire pc industry, which thanks to the prestige of IBM was also able to take off in the office sector.
So why did IBM lose the war that day? Because the November 6 agreement included a clause that allowed Microsoft to give the same operating system to other companies with another name, Ms-Dos. This clause changed the history of technology because led to the opening up of an IBM-clone market, computers made by other companies, often at a lower price, but with the same features: compatible. Which happened on November 4, 1982, when Compaq launched the Portable PC, which was in fact a copy of the IBM PC, but with a different design.
The operating system was the heart of a personal computer, the hardware was less important; And the operating system was from Microsoft and not from IBM. It was a clause in that November 6, 1980 contract that decided which PC we would use for years to come.
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