Until 1995 Microsoft traded below $5 a share, rising quickly over the 1990s and 2000s. It builds devices to run Apple software natively.ĭespite going public in 1986, the company's stock didn't take off for another 10 years. Apple, on the other hand, was and is a company that controls every step of the process. It simply licensed DOS (and later Windows) to manufacturers. Until it entered the tablet market, Microsoft never had a relationship with the hardware running its operating system. Although over time Apple and Microsoft came to dominate the personal computer market, each took a very different approach. Report entered the consumer computer market but the two companies never competed directly. UNIX and its related software LINUX remained as the other major operating systems that users could install if they chose, as they do today, but neither have ever received mainstream consumer adoption. Most notably, this displaced IBM's OS 2 operating system as the main competitor in the PC operating system market. Shortly after its launch most personal computer companies adopted MS-DOS as their operating system.

The operating system market created Microsoft as most people think of the company today. They named their company Microsoft for Microcomputer Software, a nod to the era of miniaturization that changed computing forever.

(An 'interpreter' is a piece of software which lets users write and execute code on the computer.) Specifically, their company sold an interpreter for the popular BASIC programming language that would run on the Altair. Microsoft was originally founded to write code for a company called MITS which produced the Altair computer. Nevertheless, they did launch their company out of a garage in Albuquerque, N.M. Allen had worked as a programmer for the company Honeywell while Gates studied at mathematics and computer science at Harvard. Neither Bill Gates nor co-founder Paul Allen were laymen when they founded Microsoft on April 4, 1975. In the case of Microsoft it's also somewhat true. From Ben Franklin puttering in his living room to Thomas Edison inventing the modern world out of Menlo Park, this is a story that people tell over and over again. Americans love the inventor working out of their garage.

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