The ego involved in making an operating system

[@janhenkins]

Hi Al. Yep, I agree that to write an OS and to push it as "better than the rest", you definitely have to have a set of brass door-knockers... I also agree with the ego-maniacal scale of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, although I would argue that Steve Jobs was defo in a different galaxy when it comes to that. Bill Gates wanted to control the platform only in order to sell their products (Office/Outlook/Project/etc), but Steve Jobs wanted to control the entire ecosystem - starting with your wallet via your iPhone, then onwards to your tablet and then on to your laptop or desktop computer. Software, hardware and everything. That takes more than just a set of brass goolies by quite an order of magnitude.

[@maxxlr8tion578]

What is the alternative?

[@peebola]

Interesting take, not sure I agree that it's ego driven, rather than trying to get the biggest commercial penetration into the market, to make money. To apply this to other industries, eg the automobile - that would be like saying BMW is egotistical as they want you to "buy our cars and not another manufacturer"? Fame does not necessarily equate to ego either, you've named 3 of the most well known IT guys in Linus, Jobs and Gates. Maybe this could apply to all famously wealthy/successful people in commerce... Bezos, Musk etc. So does this apply for operating systems, or commerce in general? Good thought provoking video!

[@nickmax99]

NeXT was absolutely groundbreaking. Based on BSD. And definitely the right thing for Apple.

[@AlsGeekLab]

Agreed

[@mulad]

It certainly takes a lot of ego to stick with them once they get started, though you never know which ones will stick around. New hardware has triggered the creation of a number of them -- especially Linux, which emerged as a 32-bit OS while Microsoft and IBM were dragging their heels getting out of 16-bit land. Getting to true multi-tasking with full task preemption and privilege separation was really important, not to mention deeply-integrated ability to handle TCP/IP. Apple also had to make that jump too, and it's interesting that they ultimately took the path of using the OS from Steve Jobs' other company NeXT -- certainly no shortage of ego there.

[@TawaSkies]

An interesting take. I think and EGO is needed to excel at most things. As for Microsoft they kind of fell into the OS writing business, in that Bill G first sent IBM to Digital Research for CPM before taking on themselves. Knowing that They didn't have anything but a small company down the road had what they needed to start with, and the rest is history. Linus was at college using MINIX which he hated, so that was his initial starting place. Most of the others started with the hardware and knew that without OS, tools and software selling it would be hard going. Just and image the EGO involve in writing a BIOS/firmware in which is required even before you can get an OS installed.

[@AlsGeekLab]

Thanks Bill, yep, did you see.docu-series on cp/m and Gary Kildall? I think in the case of Microsoft, they did fall into it, but the ego came when they decided to dominate all the computer markets shortly after the release of DOS.

[@TawaSkies]

@@AlsGeekLab Bill G was always good at seizing an opportunity

[@TawaSkies]

@@AlsGeekLab Gary's story is quite sad, but he was a great software engineer