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> The Cambrian explosion IBM-PC compatability didn’t happen overnight of course. There's a recording of an interview with Bill Gates floating around where he p
by gwbas1c 10mo ago
> The Cambrian explosion IBM-PC compatability didn’t happen overnight of course.
There's a recording of an interview with Bill Gates floating around where he pretty much takes credit for that. He claims (paraphrasing because I listened to it almost 20 years ago) that he suggested a lot of the hardware to IBM because he knew he could repurpose DOS for it.
- gorgoiler 10mo agoI also phrased this badly. Cambrian explosions by definition happen in very short time frames (“overnight”), but the conditions required to set off the explosion take a long time to brew and are few and far between. We’re two decades into the smartphone era and my hope is that we’re still in the DEC / VAX / S370 stage, with the “IBM-PC” stage just around the corner still to come.