OS/2

And at that time, Windows was plan B at Microsoft.

Plan A was OS2.

All the very best...

System software developers were on OS2.

We had the partnership with IBM.

It took a little while after that for me to finally say yes.

Right.

Netscape had taken a. cross-platform strategy.

So it's not that outrageous that one day in 1996, Gil Amelio calls Bill Gates up and says, "Bill, how about Microsoft helping to create a Mac operating system based on Windows NT?" Which is totally what he did.

If you look at the block diagram for Windows NT, you will see, and here is the MS-DOS subsystem, and here is the Windows subsystem, and here is the OS/2 subsystem.

And it was like the whole point was a base OS-

Yeah

... and then you could run different kinds of apps on top of it.

Right.

And they put blocks like, well, OS/2 exists as a thing that IBM is doing, and of course, we have MS-DOS, and, like, that's what it's designed to do.

Microsoft is making inroads as well with Apple's traditional publishing customers.

The Microsoft team ran it on an Altaire emulator before shipping a tape that was simply labeled Operating System for IBM.

IBM's decision makers had already made their own in-house operating system OS/2, and were wary of being locked into one vendor, but they also didn't want to risk the performance glitches that came from an unproven product.

What Gates did was to offer a proof of concept with minimal costs.

He shipped a working beta that allowed IBM's developers to install it on a test rig.