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•Eight Greatest Computer Innovations that Actually Make Life Easier 87

Idea 50 – Great business idea? – Sell a piece of software to
the entire world and keep charging for updates (Microsoft)

‘Sir money, money, the most charming of all things; money, which will say more
in one moment than the most elegant lover can in years. Perhaps you will say a
man is not young; I answer he is rich. He is not genteel, handsome, witty, brave,
good-humoured, but he is rich, rich, rich, rich, rich – that word contradicts every-
thing you can say against him.’

Henry Fielding (1707–1754)

In 1977 Bill Gates’ Microsoft sold a version of BASIC to Apple who marketed it as
Applesoft. The flat fee for the software was $21,000, which seemed a good idea at
the time. Apple proceeded to sell more than a million machines with BASIC built
in, a fee to Microsoft of 2 cents per copy. No one can say that Bill Gates does not
learn from his mistakes.

Microsoft has produced a lot of commercial firsts, including the Microsoft Mouse
pointing device, but it was in 1983 that the big announcement came. Microsoft
unveiled Windows, an extension of the operating system MS-DOS used by the grand
majority of PC manufacturers and users. This graphical operating environment re-
ally would start to take the PC away from the boffins towards the mass user. In
addition the company brought out Word and later made software available on the
Apple Macintosh computer.

In 1985 the PC finally went graphical with the retailing of the Windows graphi-
cal environment. Market acceptance was slow due to the limited number of pro-
grams available. There were even some doubts as to whether Douglas Engelbart’s
vision of the user interface was going to catch on. They continued to develop the
Windows concept and started to add usable software such as Excel spreadsheets.

By 1988 Microsoft was the biggest software supplier in the world and it had
sold its millionth Mouse. And so it goes on, through Windows 2.0 to Windows 3.0,