P.J.
0
How did Bill Gates choose the name Microsoft?
Bill Gates didn't choose the name for Microsoft -- Paul Allen did. The story goes that Allen got himself a copy of the then-latest January 1, 1975 issue of Popular Electronics featuring a story on the debut of the MITS Altair 8800 kit. The magazine proclaimed it as a "project breakthrough" and the "World's First Minicomputer Kit to Rival Commercial Models."
Gates and Allen had already been attending their now-famous Home Brew Computer Club which was comprised of fellow computing hobbyists including another famous alliance of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak who themselves had a kit computer.
The significance of the article that made Allen so excited (and also triggered the two of them moving to Albuquerque, New Mexico to be as close as possible to the MITS HQ) was the epiphany that this was going to cause an onslaught of new hobbyists and eventually even commercial manufacturers to make new so-called minicomputers.
The "breakthrough" that made this all possible was the invention of the "MICROPROCESSOR". The microprocessor was the invention that sparked the entire tech industry as we know it into being.
Allen reasoned that there would be a glut of new computer but they would need standard means to write software for all of them. At the time, that didn't mean operating systems -- it meant programming languages ported to each microprocessor. What the next leap was going to be after microprocessors made computing cheap would be SOFTWARE.
MICROSOFT is a portmanteau of the words "MICROprocessor" and "SOFTware." Their mission was to be "Software for Microprocessors."
They accomplished their mission very early on. There was a point in time that Microsoft Basic and Microsoft Fortran were available on just about every microprocessor-based computer out there. And this role a being a standard software base for developers across many differing manufacturers was the exact philosophy that carried over into their strategy initially with MS-DOS and eventually with Microsoft Windows.
From day one, their primary customer had been software developers developers developers so they could build to the Microsoft software-platform (read Basic, DOS, Windows, and now .NET) and not have to worry about the particulars of hardware or making specific versions of their software for each different machine.
Their interactions with Xerox PARC and Apple (particularly Steve Jobs) brought in later iterations and insights that made them realize that this "Software for Microprocessors" idea was even bigger than they initially thought. Their original mission was to be entirely hardware-agnostic. That is why they famously wrote software for Apple and felt entirely justified to take their insights there to their other work on other platforms. Hitching their wagon to the PC is actually counter to the original mission of the company.
Part of why Windows NT was such a big deal was it was an act on Microsoft's part back then to unhitch themselves from the PC as their sole platform. Microsoft USED to have a very clear business model. If you have a device with a microprocessor in it, we have software for you. If you're a developer of apps, we are your gateway to every device with a microproessor in it. Microsoft's self-imposed limitations in the last decade have stemmed from their loyalty to the PC and to Windows -- which have had admirably long runs as product cycles go. Depends who you talk to how long those particular form factors have left or how substantially they will mutate in the next decade and beyond.
But the name was coined by Allen as was the core concept for the business. And in this case, as with a few others, the name and the idea were born together.
Microsoft = Software for Microprocessors. Allen was as right as right can be that this microchip thing would really take off. Clearly that's never been truer and if you think about the future, it doesn't end... we get smaller and smaller into multi-core and ultimately into nanochips. And people are always going to need software for those things. It is and was literally and figuratively one of those multibillion dollar ideas. It has changed the world and will continue to do so for the conceivable future.
https://www.quora.com/How-did-Bill-Gates-choose-the-name-Microsoft
Bill Gates didn't choose the name for Microsoft -- Paul Allen did. The story goes that Allen got himself a copy of the then-latest January 1, 1975 issue of Popular Electronics featuring a story on the debut of the MITS Altair 8800 kit. The magazine proclaimed it as a "project breakthrough" and the "World's First Minicomputer Kit to Rival Commercial Models."
Gates and Allen had already been attending their now-famous Home Brew Computer Club which was comprised of fellow computing hobbyists including another famous alliance of Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak who themselves had a kit computer.
The significance of the article that made Allen so excited (and also triggered the two of them moving to Albuquerque, New Mexico to be as close as possible to the MITS HQ) was the epiphany that this was going to cause an onslaught of new hobbyists and eventually even commercial manufacturers to make new so-called minicomputers.
The "breakthrough" that made this all possible was the invention of the "MICROPROCESSOR". The microprocessor was the invention that sparked the entire tech industry as we know it into being.
Allen reasoned that there would be a glut of new computer but they would need standard means to write software for all of them. At the time, that didn't mean operating systems -- it meant programming languages ported to each microprocessor. What the next leap was going to be after microprocessors made computing cheap would be SOFTWARE.
MICROSOFT is a portmanteau of the words "MICROprocessor" and "SOFTware." Their mission was to be "Software for Microprocessors."
They accomplished their mission very early on. There was a point in time that Microsoft Basic and Microsoft Fortran were available on just about every microprocessor-based computer out there. And this role a being a standard software base for developers across many differing manufacturers was the exact philosophy that carried over into their strategy initially with MS-DOS and eventually with Microsoft Windows.
From day one, their primary customer had been software developers developers developers so they could build to the Microsoft software-platform (read Basic, DOS, Windows, and now .NET) and not have to worry about the particulars of hardware or making specific versions of their software for each different machine.
Their interactions with Xerox PARC and Apple (particularly Steve Jobs) brought in later iterations and insights that made them realize that this "Software for Microprocessors" idea was even bigger than they initially thought. Their original mission was to be entirely hardware-agnostic. That is why they famously wrote software for Apple and felt entirely justified to take their insights there to their other work on other platforms. Hitching their wagon to the PC is actually counter to the original mission of the company.
Part of why Windows NT was such a big deal was it was an act on Microsoft's part back then to unhitch themselves from the PC as their sole platform. Microsoft USED to have a very clear business model. If you have a device with a microprocessor in it, we have software for you. If you're a developer of apps, we are your gateway to every device with a microproessor in it. Microsoft's self-imposed limitations in the last decade have stemmed from their loyalty to the PC and to Windows -- which have had admirably long runs as product cycles go. Depends who you talk to how long those particular form factors have left or how substantially they will mutate in the next decade and beyond.
But the name was coined by Allen as was the core concept for the business. And in this case, as with a few others, the name and the idea were born together.
Microsoft = Software for Microprocessors. Allen was as right as right can be that this microchip thing would really take off. Clearly that's never been truer and if you think about the future, it doesn't end... we get smaller and smaller into multi-core and ultimately into nanochips. And people are always going to need software for those things. It is and was literally and figuratively one of those multibillion dollar ideas. It has changed the world and will continue to do so for the conceivable future.
https://www.quora.com/How-did-Bill-Gates-choose-the-name-Microsoft
