Chapter 10: Riding the… bear?

Reverse engineering was the main topic of the video (or at least, the one I found most interesting). How the company was available to replicate the ROM BIOS through this concept is something fascinating, whatever was meant to be hidden and secret, was forever known and open to the public after the reverse engineering process.



This process involved two different types of employees, the ones that know how the system works, and the so called “virgins”, which knowledge of the ROM BIOS was inexistent. The journey to get to a completed product no one knew how it worked (at least the engineers in charge of building the chip) is the thing I liked the most. And that’s how Compaq made a portable computer, compatible with IBM. This was the start of the dozens of rivals IBM started acquiring thanks to the easiness to build a clone. The thing in common every clone-builder had, was its operating system, acquired thanks to Microsoft.

Finally, this way the balance worked out for Microsoft was genuinely lucky. When the main target of the market was hardware, after the reverse engineering process, the hardware “monopoly” disappeared, and all eyes turned to software, where Microsoft was in charge. And while Microsoft was smaller than IBM, Wall Street said that Microsoft was way more valuable.

This started to seem like a tug-of-war between IBM and Microsoft, however, after some struggling, even Apple joined the fray (even though considering tug-of-war is only between two teams, Apple made it possible to join); they made an operating system that blew the competition away, a graphically visual operating system.

The conclusion I got from the end of the video is that innovation is key in keeping up in the technology business. Because IBM gave everything for granted, everyone else caught up, making room to Microsoft to take the lead. However, Apple went a couple of steps ahead, and started to gain control of the market.

References:

Cringely Robert X (1996) Triumph of the Nerds Part II: Riding the Bear. Produced by PBS.

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