[X4U] Windows on Mac Fact

[Jim Robertson]

On 1/14/06 8:38 AM, "Aron Spencer" <aron at r8ix.com> wrote:

> No they didn't. They just misunderestimated the difficulty of cloning
> it. There were lawsuits over the first (compaq) clones, and the
> cloners had to show that they were created in a "clean" environment,
> with no access to BIOS code, just duplication of functionality.

Of course you're entirely correct. What IBM had underestimated was the
viability of personal desktop computers in the first place, which supposedly
is why they farmed out development of the operating system. Microsoft's very
first marketing coup was getting IBM clone manufacturers (I don't remember
if they extracted the same tariff from IBM itself) that if a PC manufacturer
wanted to bundle MS-DOS on any of its boxes, it had to pay Microsoft a
licensing fee for EVERY box it sold,whether the customer chose MS-DOS,
DR-DOS, or whatever the third choice originally available was.

Jim Robertson
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