NCR - XEROX - IBM - MICROSOFT - APPLE

Beware of where your thoughts drove you when you opened this page today.  This is not about the relative merits of the three corporate behemoths named in the title.  It is about a thought that I have had for many years.  I have shared it verbally with many people.  Now, you're going to enjoy it up close and personal.  I have NCR at the top left because that is in my mind since November 8, 1960.  Some of you may remember the date.  It is the day when Jack Kennedy was elected president of the United States.  Lost in the minds of those who, like me, remember exactly where they were that long and weary night, is the fact that ENIAC, the mammoth computer produced by NCR was online that night, following the election and projecting the outcome.  This was a first.  It was a historic moment for the world.   Not only were humans working things out in their minds and using their pencils and slide rules to interpret the return numbers and produce probability predictions, there were also humans feeding the information into a machine which was providing results more rapidly that the slide rules and pencils.  I remember.  
XEROX is here close to the top not because XEROX was ever a big player in the production of computers.  It is there because it is the company that received a substantial sum of money through a federal grant to study the process that it would take to turn the world into a "paperless society."  It is clear that the U.S. government was as ignorant then as it is now.  Imagine giving a federal grant to a copier manufaturer to study how to eliminate the use of paper.  Of course, like all good, clean-cut Americans, XEROX took the money and ran.   For ten years.  Now here is the punch line.  XEROX actually had a conscience.  It put all the information that it had gathered in the ten years into its museum for public display.  In walk Steve Jobs and his buddy, Steve Wozniak.  They sneak and snoop for about a month or so, leave and go out to make history.  XEROX still hasn't figured out how to make copies without paper.

The small company represented by its logo on the left was run by a guy named Watson.  I forget his first name.  The company was able to bring the size of the computer down to manageable dimensions for a couple of reasons, not the least of which is that between 1960 and 1965 or so, the solid state capacitor was invented and the days of the vacuum tube were numbered.  Bye-bye, ENIAC, bye-bye NCR.  So now that things are going faster,and of course cooler, much cooler, the demand for more and more calculating power was fast 
outstripping the ability of IBM to produce 
the operating systems needed to 
satiate the frenzy of the market.


It is now time for Bill Gates and Paul Allen to drop out 
of Harvard and offer to do a little programming for IBM.  Wouldn't you know that IBM thought that it would be a good idea to let these two guys see what they could do to make IBM more successful and more responsive to the market.  That's exactly what happened.  It happened so well that IBM no longer makes PC's or Laptops or anything like that.  Even Microsoft doesn't manufacture computers.  Never did.  Never will.  Microsoft is a purely software producer.  This brings us to our two other buddies, Steve squared, Jobs and Wozniak.

You got it.  They get together and they start Apple, Inc.  They decide that they are going to compete with IBM and Microsoft and manufacture computers and produce proprietary software for the machines that they produce.  They are very successful at what they do.  They are able to contribute to the shrinking size of computers.  They also make software that prompts the user of the machine through a set of pictures, called icons, rather than through a set of typed commands.  They dominate the market in a variety of product fields, always maintaining strict control over the rights to their finished products.


Through all of this, the computer never gets patented.  To this day.  That's where my thought entered the picture some 45 + years ago.  It is a thought that divides the world into two major groups.  Those who want to keep what they produce under their strict control, thereby being, as close as possible, the sole beneficiaries of their efforts, AND, those who produce and help others to produce so that a broad base of producers and users can benefit from the product.  It is a thought akin to the "Give a man a fish..." parable.  From the very beginning of the computer boom, IBM and Microsoft didn't patent anything.  They treated the fruits of their work as though it were already in the public domain, and in fact, from the beginning, it was.  It was always possible to buy an "IBM compatible" computer from the geek down the street who was building them in his garage.  So it remains to this day.  Hundreds, if not thousands of companies and even individuals produce PC's on the IBM/Microsoft model for their own benefit and the benefit of the broad base of computer users across the world.  Apple has had to make adjustments to its operating system in order to be available to the whole, wide world, but it still remains a more expensive machine with fewer users.  


Apple has been creative in many ways and must be admired for this.  It is also undeniable that in many ways it remains aloof and maintains a blue-blood attitude in relation to the rest of the world.  Microsoft is a hard driving, brass knuckles company too and maintains an attitude of inter-mingling with the world, for the good of the world.  
Finally, lately I have been having some difficulty finding the Steve Jobs Charitable Foundation information.  Do you suppose that Google has something against Apple?


Larry Page and Sergey Brin are exceptions:  They both graduated from college.  How come they are so successful?