Chương 25: The Glass Interface (03/10/1981)

DATE: Tuesday, March 10, 1981 LOCATION: La Jolla, California | The Sand Castle Lower Foundation LOCAL TIME: 05: 55 PM A red light began to pulse on the reinforced blast door of the secure terminal room built into the back of the bunker. The loud man with the glasses was waiting. I walked into the terminal room and locked the door behind me. I sat in the oversized leather chair, pulled the microphone to my mouth, and slipped a single earpiece into my right ear.

I flipped the switch on the green monochrome monitor, bringing up the closed-circuit feed from our Torrey Pines facility. LOCATION: Torrey Pines, California | The Sutra Campus (The War Room) LOCAL TIME: 06: 00 PM PST Through the grainy camera feed, Bill Gates paced. He wore a wrinkled button-down shirt, wearing a trench into the carpet of the small office we had built for Bob Yauney. Gates was twenty-five, brilliant, and currently vibrating with anxiety.

"The IBM launch is set," Gates said the moment the clock struck six.

"August 12th. The Model 5150. We have DOS ready. It works. It's ugly, but it works." Uncle Bob sat behind his desk. He touched his right ear, a subtle confirmation that he could hear me. He's panicking about Apple, I whispered into my microphone in the La Jolla bunker. Tell him to sit down and look at the board.

"Sit down, Bill," Bob said, his voice perfectly calm, channeling the absolute executive authority I fed him.

"I can't sit," Gates snapped.

"Apple is up to something. I hear rumors. Jobs is visiting Xerox PARC. He's looking at the Alto. If they launch a graphical system before we establish the command line standard, we're dead." We aren't dead, I fed the line. We're just going to let Jobs break the ice, and then we'll steal the water.

"We aren't dead," Bob translated smoothly.

"We're just skipping a step." Bob opened his desk drawer and pulled out a wooden block that Wozniak had carved in the workshop weeks ago. It had a single red button on top and a rolling ball bearing embedded in the bottom. Bob slid it across the desk. Gates stopped pacing.

"What is that?" It's a mouse, I said. Xerox invented it. Jobs is going to steal it. But we are going to own the metaphor.

"It's a mouse," Bob said.

"Xerox has been sitting on it. Jobs is going to take the hardware idea to build a graphical interface. But we are going to own the metaphor, Bill." Gates picked it up. He clicked the button.

"A pointing device? Bob, serious users type. They use command lines. C-Prompts. You can't run a business with a toy." The genuine version of this novel can be found on another site. Support the author by reading it there. He's thinking like an engineer, I whispered. I need you to make him think like a real estate developer. Draw the desk. Bob pulled out a large sheet of drawing paper and grabbed a black marker. He didn't just draw rectangles; he drew a desk.

"You're thinking like an engineer, Bill," Bob said.

"I need you to think like a conqueror. This isn't a screen. It's a Desktop." Bob pointed to the smaller rectangles he drew inside the screen.

"These are Windows. You don't type 'Run.' You point the mouse at a picture—an icon of a file folder—and you click. We put a graphical shell right on top of DOS." Gates frowned, his technical brain immediately hitting the hardware limits of 1981.

"That requires a massive amount of RAM. The 8088 chip barely handles text. Bitmapping the whole screen? Drawing overlapping windows in real-time? It'll crawl." Moore's Law, I said softly from La Jolla. The memory will be there by '83. Let Apple build the expensive hardware. We build the cheap, licensable software shell.

"Hardware catches up, Bill. Moore's Law," Bob relayed flawlessly.

"By the time the PC clones hit the market in '83, the memory will be there. Let Apple build the overpriced hardware. We build a cheap, licensable graphical shell that runs on everyone else's machines. If we control the visual interface, we control the user. If they learn to click our Start button, they will never leave." Gates looked at the wooden mouse in his hand. The gears were turning. I could see it through the camera. He was seeing the monopoly.

"Okay," Gates said slowly.

"A Graphical User Interface. Interface Manager?" Call it Windows, I corrected.

"Windows," Bob said.

"Keep it simple."

"Fine. Windows." Gates sat down, leaning in.

"But an OS is just a container, Bob. We need applications to give them a reason to use the mouse." He's thinking in isolated programs, I said into the mic. Tell him the real money isn't in selling tools. It's in selling the whole toolbox. The bundle. Bob drew a large circle on the paper.

"We don't sell applications, Bill. We sell an Office. Right now, people buy WordPerfect for writing, Lotus 1-2-3 for numbers, and dBase for data. They are separate islands. We are going to kill them all." Bob drew boxes inside the circle.

"We build a suite," Bob said, his systems-architect brain fully engaged in the software topology.

"One box. One visual interface. Total integration. A word processor where you see the fonts on the screen. A spreadsheet that updates graphical charts in real-time to kill Lotus." Bob tapped the paper.

"But here is the killer app," Bob continued.

"The Persuasion Engine. Slide projectors are dead, Bill. Executives want to pitch. We give them a graphical tool to make slides on the computer. It will run every boardroom in America." And the calendar, I said. Don't forget the calendar. If you own their schedule, you own their lives.

"And Outlook," Bob added, circling the final box twice.

"Not just email. The calendar. The address book. The nervous system of the corporation. If you control the schedule, you control the time." Bob looked right at Gates.

"Word. Excel. PowerPoint. Access. Outlook. We bundle them. We sell them pre-installed. We price it so low that buying WordPerfect seems insane." Gates looked at the diagram. He looked at the wooden mouse. He wasn't vibrating with anxiety anymore. He was cold. He was calculating.

"Jobs is betting on the hardware," Gates whispered.

"He wants to build the perfect, closed machine." Let him, I said softly. We will be the ghost in the machine.

"Let him," Bob said.

"We will be the ghost in the machine. We will be the software that runs the world." The sheer weight of the concept settled over the small office. Gates stood up. He pocketed the wooden mouse.

"I need to hire more developers," he said, his mind racing toward execution.

"I need Simonyi from Xerox PARC. He's the one who understands the GUI."

"Get him," Bob said.

"Pay him whatever he wants. Give him equity." Gates walked to the door. He opened it, stepping out into the Torrey Pines hallway without looking back. The solid door clicked shut, sealing the room. On the monitor, Uncle Bob slumped back in his chair. He let out a long, ragged exhale and rubbed his eyes. He looked up at the hidden camera mounted in the ceiling corner.

"You're scary, Chad," Bob whispered to the empty room.

"I'm just organized," I said into the microphone.

"Go build Windows."