Steve Ballmer

And we haven't even talked about Charles Simone yet, but this was the year he joined.

Okay, so why is IBM, the sun, the moon, and the stars of computing, why are they getting into this PC? It's way cheaper than anything else they sell. It seems to be like a totally different business strategy, a different customer set. What's going on?

Okay, so why is IBM, the sun, the moon, and the stars of computing, why are they getting into this PC? It's way cheaper than anything else they sell. It seems to be like a totally different business strategy, a different customer set. What's going on?

It's effectively a bandwidth limitation, where if you're in a single clock cycle trying to do some particular instruction, it's a very, very small amount of data that you can move through the arithmetic logic unit or that you can move through the processor in that clock cycle.

It's effectively a bandwidth limitation, where if you're in a single clock cycle trying to do some particular instruction, it's a very, very small amount of data that you can move through the arithmetic logic unit or that you can move through the processor in that clock cycle.

That's a good analogy.

That's a good analogy.

Which is why they only cost $375 or whatever for an Altair. Right. In late 1979,

Which is why they only cost $375 or whatever for an Altair. Right. In late 1979,

In 16 bits, you can represent numbers up to 65,536. So that's two to the 16th. You can do interesting things passing 16 bits around at once.

In 16 bits, you can represent numbers up to 65,536. So that's two to the 16th. You can do interesting things passing 16 bits around at once.

The further we get in the computing world, the more abstract stuff becomes. So it's always fun to go back in history when these concepts were so grounded in our physical reality that's sort of easily observable since everything was so much bigger too.

The further we get in the computing world, the more abstract stuff becomes. So it's always fun to go back in history when these concepts were so grounded in our physical reality that's sort of easily observable since everything was so much bigger too.

And the thing that they're observing about the microcomputer market is it's exploding. People in our industry know about DEC. People in the broader world never knew about DEC. But I think it's a very different rate of adoption and rate of demand with microcomputers where IBM started to kind of look at it and go, oh, this might be like a real market, like a really big computer market for people.

And the thing that they're observing about the microcomputer market is it's exploding. People in our industry know about DEC. People in the broader world never knew about DEC. But I think it's a very different rate of adoption and rate of demand with microcomputers where IBM started to kind of look at it and go, oh, this might be like a real market, like a really big computer market for people.

Yeah, even inflation adjusted. It's interesting that the rate of growth of the most valuable companies in the world in terms of market cap has far outpaced inflation.

Yeah, even inflation adjusted. It's interesting that the rate of growth of the most valuable companies in the world in terms of market cap has far outpaced inflation.

And the question is, are they playing from behind and thus have to adopt a flawed strategy? Or is this strategy of assembling with all off the shelf components actually a good strategy if it works?

And the question is, are they playing from behind and thus have to adopt a flawed strategy? Or is this strategy of assembling with all off the shelf components actually a good strategy if it works?

Now, interpreters are notably different than operating systems, but Microsoft definitely had sort of raised the flag and everyone could see if I want to go buy software for my computers, broadly, they're an interesting group to talk to.