Quote of the day by Bill Gates: 'I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out that you had already stolen it' — a witty defense against a stunning accusation
Apple and Microsoft's rivalry was bubbling over the notion of stolen ideas in the early days of personal computing
Bill Gates' wit regarding the origins of the Windows operating system came to light when he quipped about a situation that led to a bitter rivalry between Microsoft and Apple. According to a report from Apple's Macintosh system software designer, Andy Hertzfeld, Steve Jobs became incredibly angry when he discovered that Microsoft had released their first mouse-based system before Apple's scheduled 1983 launch.
Despite agreeing to a staggered release in their 1981 deal, with Windows allowed to debut a year later, Microsoft felt it was still within its rights to introduce Windows sooner. Apple's designer wrote in his account that Gates calmly explained that the fundamental idea wasn't either of their inventions and reiterated the terms of their 1981 agreement.
This feud between the tech giants traces back to Jobs recruiting Microsoft as Macintosh's first software developer, a move that put both companies on equal footing with their shared exposure to Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) ideas, including their mouse-based system. Microsoft didn't unveil a functional Windows until nearly two years later, and it was still rudimentary, according to Hertzfeld.
When Microsoft finally released a version of Windows that Jobs considered satisfactory in 1988, he sued for copyright infringement, but his case ended in a technicality.
Written by urgent.news from TechRadar's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
