With 20/20 hindsight it is easy to connect the dots that led to Microsoft's dominance of the PC industry. And although the Altair Basic may have led to it - it in itself was not enough to catapult them to their future success. Their big break came from their deal with IBM for the Operating System. And that deal was literally gifted to them due to a confluence of many factors - with luck playing a huge part in it.
In fact Gates directed IBM to approach Gary Kildall of Digital Research for the OS. But Kildall skipped the first meeting with IBM and his team at DR dilly-dallied on signing a standard NDA with IBM and could not reach an agreement. IBM went back to Gates for an answer for the OS. [1]
Had DR not dropped the ball on the IBM deal, the future would have been very different for Microsoft, and for DR and for the world. It is all of course counterfactual - but who knows - the world may have been running on CPM/2015, and Gates and Allen would have been running a successful PC software company - selling compilers and languages for it.
It Gates and Allen's ability to turn this fateful second chance into what we now know to be the deal of the century. In fact, Microsoft used this chance to sell QDOS (Quick and Dirty OS) - from a lone programmer (Dave Patterson) working across the lake in Seattle on a port of CP/M to 8086 - to IBM. IBM was not aware of this small company (Seattle Computer Products). Later it was found that QDOS literally "stole" CP/M code and function calls. DR sued but IBM settled the suit with DR by bundling CPM/86 with the PC - but selling it for $240 as opposed to $40 for PC DOS. CP/M never had a chance. And the rest as they say is history...
In fact Gates directed IBM to approach Gary Kildall of Digital Research for the OS. But Kildall skipped the first meeting with IBM and his team at DR dilly-dallied on signing a standard NDA with IBM and could not reach an agreement. IBM went back to Gates for an answer for the OS. [1]
Had DR not dropped the ball on the IBM deal, the future would have been very different for Microsoft, and for DR and for the world. It is all of course counterfactual - but who knows - the world may have been running on CPM/2015, and Gates and Allen would have been running a successful PC software company - selling compilers and languages for it.
It Gates and Allen's ability to turn this fateful second chance into what we now know to be the deal of the century. In fact, Microsoft used this chance to sell QDOS (Quick and Dirty OS) - from a lone programmer (Dave Patterson) working across the lake in Seattle on a port of CP/M to 8086 - to IBM. IBM was not aware of this small company (Seattle Computer Products). Later it was found that QDOS literally "stole" CP/M code and function calls. DR sued but IBM settled the suit with DR by bundling CPM/86 with the PC - but selling it for $240 as opposed to $40 for PC DOS. CP/M never had a chance. And the rest as they say is history...
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gary_Kildall
EDITS: typos