Triumph of the Nerds Part II: Riding the Bear" by PBS

In the documentary called "Triumph of the Nerds Part II: Riding the Bear" by PBS, very interesting data was analyzed. It is impressive to see how in a few years the computer market came to be worth millions of dollars. As it is mentioned in the documentary, Apple, IBM, Bill Gates with Microsoft and some others were very important actors for that fact to happen.

Several misplaced things happened in order to build the empire of computers. For example, the fact that IBM decided to take out a new product, even if it meant that they would have to leave their conventional process and do things differently. The fact that IBM made that decision was strange, but they believed it was the right thing to do. On the other hand, although IBM will manage to build its new product (A personal computer) they were still worried about the user experience, or more specifically, about the software they would use.

Thanks to the above, Bill Gates' products had the opportunity to be choosen as the new software for all IBM computers. And I think Bill Gates had a stroke of luck due to the strange behavior of Gary Kildall, who did not take the opportunity to sell his Operating System to IBM. Thanks to the above, Microsoft became the option and they did everything to have an OS ready to license it to IBM.

I found it really interesting how Microsoft and IBM went from being partners to competing with each other. I do not know if it was an error of IBM to enter the market of personal computers with such an open architecture, however, it is true that it got out of hand and for that reason many companies took advantage of the situation. The winners at the end were Intel and Microsoft. In my opinion, I think Bill Gates was very lucky, but it is also true that his vision and his ease with business led him to win a large part of the business.