Windows 95 was the first operating system I used.

This was back in the time

when you would be checking out at the grocery store

and there would be a stack of AOL CDs

that came with hundreds of hours of free internet.

Yes, your internet was tracked in hours

and you paid for each one.

While 95 was the first OS

used, Windows XP is where I really started to get into computers. Downloading wares,

infecting my computer, wiping it, reinstalling Windows, tweaking the registry. It was a blast.

Back then, I had VNC installed on my laptop, and the port was forwarded on my Linksys WRT

54G router so I could access it remotely from school and get around the internet filters.

One weekend, I was out at a friend's house, where I wouldn't be accessing my laptop from,

but I still had it turned on and running, sitting in the corner of my parents' living room.

When I got home, I asked my dad why the laptop was shut. He said when he walked by the computer,

he noticed the mouse was moving and random windows were opening and closing, so he shut the lid.

When I went to check, I opened the laptop and saw that whoever had connected in over VNC

had downloaded and installed Cain and Abel. If you've never heard of it before, Cain and Abel is

a password recovery tool for Windows. I use password recovery tool very loosely in this context,

because typically, a malicious actor will use it to steal credentials from a Windows machine

by sniffing network packets, cracking hashes, or brute-forcing passwords. Needless to say,

I learned that day that ApplePie13 is not a secure password. But it did introduce me to the world

of hacking and the plethora of tools available. So thank you, random internet stranger, for that

introduction. But today isn't about hacking, it's about Microsoft. It's about a pioneer in the tech

industry, Bill Gates. From lying computer nerd to billionaire, on this episode of In the Shell.

Whoa. Hey, why we're not shipping Windows 98? Absolutely. Mr. Jobs, you're a bright and

influential man. Here it comes. It's sad and clear that on several accounts you've discussed,

you don't know what you're talking about. The key to success is developers, developers, developers,

developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers.

Janice and I don't own phones. Neither should you people, if you have any common sense.

My name is Josh, and I'm able to keep this podcast independent and advertisement-free

because of support from listeners like you. If you are finding value in what I'm doing here,

consider becoming a paid supporter at members.sideofburritos.com. And as a thank you,

members get early access to new videos, ad-free versions of everything, bonus content, and access

to a live monthly Q&A. Thanks for considering. Now let's get back to the show.

Born in 1955 to an affluent Seattle family, William Henry Gates III, known as Bill, was raised with high

expectations. The Gates household thrived on competition, whether it was playing board games

or racing to the end of the dock, there was always a reward for winning and a penalty for losing.

In 1968, Gates enrolled at Lakeside School, where a fateful encounter with a general electric computer

terminal would change his life. Gates and his friend Paul Allen became inseparable computer nerds

at Lakeside, burning through hours of computer time. In one infamous incident, Gates and his buddies

were caught hacking into the system's code to get free computer time and promptly got banned for the entire

summer. Instead of deterring him, this only sharpened Bill's ingenuity. He and his friends formed the Lakeside

Programmers Club, offering to find software bugs in exchange for more computer time. By age 15, Gates was already

launching small ventures, even creating a traffic analysis program with Allen called TraffoData.

Fast forward to 1973, Gates scored an almost...

perfect 1590 on his SATs and enrolled at Harvard. There, a dormitory hallway encounter rekindled a

friendship with Steve Ballmer, another brilliant and equally competitive student who lived down

the hall and also happens to be the subject of my previous episode if you haven't listened to

that one yet. Then, in late 1974, Gates' childhood friend Paul Allen showed him a magazine article

about the Altair 8800, one of the first microcomputers. To Bill, the personal computer

revolution was beginning and software was the key. Faced with a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,

Gates made a bold choice. In 1975, he dropped out of Harvard to start a software company with Allen.

If you had stayed at Harvard a few more years...

years. Would this computer revolution have passed you by?

Perhaps. Things moved very quickly in the industry and it was really the

urgency to get out there and be the first one to put a

basic on the microcomputer that caused me to drop out. You're called a genius

and I will, well no, I don't think that embarrassed you at all. They call you a

genius. Two young geeks arrived in Albuquerque, New Mexico

in 1975. Gates and Allen had contacted the maker of the Altair

M-I-T-S, claiming they had developed a basic interpreter

for the new computer. The truth was they hadn't written a single line of code for

the Altair yet, but they were confident they could pull it

off. Working around the clock for mere weeks,

they created the software and demonstrated it to M-I-T-S.

It worked on the first try, astonishing the M-I-T-S executives.

That success

It's been a dream that this will just be dapat to世 by the new computer,

old computer, which is a new computer computer to work with him and

This full demo scored them a deal to distribute what became Altair Basic, Microsoft's first product.

In an early display of marketing flair, Allen and Gates initially dubbed their partnership Micro-Soft, short for Microcomputer Software.

By late 1976, the hyphen was dropped and Microsoft was officially born.

After Altair Basic took off among hobbyists, Gates discovered many users were sharing it without paying.

In 1976, he penned an open letter to hobbyists, scolding them for pirating software and arguing that developers deserve to be paid.

What a nerd.

This was an unusual stance in the freewheeling 1970s computer club scene, and it made the 21-year-old Gates unpopular with some hobbyists.

Here's an extra.

excerpt from that letter. As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your

software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share. Who cares if the people

who worked on it get paid? One thing you do do is prevent good software from being written.

Who can afford to do professional work for nothing? What hobbyist can put three man years

into programming, finding all bugs, documenting his product, and distribute it for free?

The fact is, no one besides us has invested a lot of money into hobby software.

By 1979, Microsoft relocated to Washington State and the team expanded. Gates was a demanding leader,

famously reviewing and often rewriting every line of code his employees produced in those early years.

One of Microsoft's first recruits in 1980 was none other than Steve Ballmer, Gates' Harvard pal who dropped out of Stanford Business School to join as Microsoft's first business manager.

Ballmer brought energy and operational discipline, freeing Gates to focus on technology.

Microsoft's rocket ride truly began with a phone call in 1980.

The computing giant IBM was entering the personal computer market and approached Gates for help.

Initially, IBM just wanted Microsoft's expertise on a basic programming language for the upcoming IBM PC.

But in a twist of fate, when IBM mentioned they also needed an operating system, Gates and Allen quickly struck their own deal.

They acquired an existing OS called 86-DOS, also known as...

QDOS, from a local developer for $50,000. They tweaked it and presented it to IBM as PC-DOS.

Instead of selling IBM the software outright, Microsoft licensed the operating system while

retaining the rights. Gates believed that other companies would clone IBM's PC design,

which meant Microsoft could sell its own version, MS-DOS, to all of them.

And that's exactly what happened. IBM PCs spawned an industry of compatible clones,

all running Microsoft's DOS. Microsoft went from a small player to the dominant software supplier

of the PC era virtually overnight. In 1981, at just 25 years old, Bill Gates became

Microsoft's president and chairman, presiding over a PC software empire.

By 1986, Microsoft went public, and Gates became a billionaire at age 31.

By the mid-1980s, Microsoft had conquered the realm of text-based computing, but a new paradigm was emerging, graphical user interfaces.

Apple, led by Steve Jobs, had introduced the Macintosh in 1984 with a flashy Super Bowl ad and a promise to revolutionize computing with intuitive graphics.

Initially, Gates and Jobs had a cordial relationship.

Microsoft was actually a key early developer for the Mac, creating applications like Excel and Word for Apple's systems.

In a famous 1983 Apple event, Jobs even staged a playful dating game spoof, casting Bill Gates as an eligible bachelor, competing to write software for the Mac.

macintosh software magnate number three when was your first date with macintosh we've been working

with the mac for almost two years now and we put some of our really good people on it software ceo

number three will macintosh be the third industry standard well to create a new standard it takes

something that's not just a little bit different it takes something that's really new and really

captures people's imagination and the macintosh of all the machines i've ever seen is the only one

that meets that standard it was all in good fun showcasing the friendlier side of the rivalry at

the time but that friendship soon gave way to fierce competition gates had his own plans to bring

graphical interfaces to the pc

In 1985, Microsoft launched Windows 1.0, a bit clunky at first, but a clear response to the Mac's pioneering graphical interface.

Steve Jobs was furious. He felt Microsoft had stolen ideas from the Macintosh.

Gates, ever the realist, supposedly replied with dry wit.

Well, Steve, I think there's more than one way of looking at it.

Both men knew Apple and Microsoft had each borrowed from ideas first seen at Xerox PARC Labs years before.

Apple actually sued Microsoft in 1988, alleging Windows illegally copied Mac's look and feel.

Years of legal battles later, Microsoft prevailed in court, and by then, Windows had evolved and dominated the market, while Apple was sh**ing.

Struggling. The stark contrast between the two founders became legend. Jobs was the visionary

artist, insisting on perfection and elegant design. Gates was the pragmatic engineer businessman,

willing to embrace, extend, and outmaneuver to win. As Jobs once famously remarked in the 90s,

The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste. They have absolutely no taste.

And what that means is, I don't mean that in a small way, I mean that in a big way, in the sense that

they don't think of original ideas, and they don't bring much culture into their product.

By the early 1990s, Bill Gates had firmly won the PC wars. And yet, in an ironic twist, 1997 saw Gates

and Jobs.

briefly unite. Apple, then in dire straits, welcomed Steve Jobs back to the helm. Jobs

reached out to his old rival, and Gates agreed to invest $150 million in Apple and continue

developing Microsoft Office for Mac. At the Macworld Expo stage in August 1997, the two

appeared together, Jobs on stage, and Gates looming on a giant video screen overhead. The

sight of Bill Gates' face elicited a mix of boos and gasps from the Apple faithful. Jobs reminded

the crowd that Apple needed Microsoft, and vice versa, saying we have to let go of the notion

that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose. And I'd like to announce one of our first

partnerships today, a very, very meaningful one, and that is one with Microsoft.

I'd like to take you through this.

The discussions actually began because there were some patent disputes.

And rather than...

I know.

Rather than repeating history, I'm extremely proud of both companies

that they have resolved these differences in a very, very professional way.

And I happen to have a special guest with me today via satellite downlink.

And if we could get him up on the stage right now.

Good morning.

having spent over 25 years building Microsoft, Bill Gates began to ponder his legacy beyond the

By the early 2000s,

company walls. He once said, success is a lousy teacher. It seduces smart people into thinking

they can't lose. In 2000, Gates stepped down as CEO, with Balmer succeeding him, and later began

transitioning out of the day-to-day work at Microsoft. That same year, he and his wife Melinda

established the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, which would grow into the world's largest private

charitable organization. The foundation took on ambitious goals, fighting infectious diseases,

improving global health, boosting education, and reducing extreme poverty. Over the next two

decades, Gates would devote over 50 billion of his wealth to these causes. The ripple effect

impact this program.

of his audacious journey, the PC in your home, the software we use daily, are all around us.

I want to add a bit of my personal opinion and observation here. It's amazing how these companies

will lie, cheat, and steal early on, lying to Altair, ripping each other off, Microsoft lifting

ideas from Apple, and Apple claiming their designs are unique and unrivaled, even though many were

clearly inspired by Dieter Rams and the Bauhaus movement. But then later, they are the ones

pushing for rules and legislation to stop that exact same behavior. OpenAI is a great example.

They scraped and repurposed the world's content to build their product. Even if you're unsure how

you feel about copyright, the hypocrisy is hard to miss. They build on freely available content,

then fight to control access.

Once they've secured their dominance, I don't know.

It's just frustrating to watch the same narrative play out over and over.

In the Shell is written, researched, and recorded by me, the Altair Reur Motive Podcaster.

If you're listening on an app that lets you rate shows, please take a minute to rate this one.

I would truly appreciate it.

And if you're looking for a great movie that covers the early days of Apple and Microsoft with some creative liberties, check out Pirates of Silicon Valley.

That's it. Take care, and I'll see you next time.