A Quote by Jerry Pournelle

Gates has always understood Moore's Law better than anyone else in the industry. If you can make something run at all, get it out there -it may be slow and clunky, but hardware improvements will bail you out. If you wait until it's running perfectly on the hardware already in the field, it will be obsolete before it's released. This philosophy built Microsoft and is the main reason Microsoft won the war IBM declared back in the OS/2 days.

Jerry Pournelle

Quote Topics

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Quote Author

Jerry Pournelle
American - Journalist
August 7, 1933 - September 8, 2017

It's like when IBM drove a lot of innovation out of the computer industry before the microprocessor came along. Eventually, Microsoft will crumble because of complacency, and maybe some new things will grow. But until that happens, until there's some fundamental technology shift, it's just over.

Steve Jobs

Microsoft fears Intel is eventually going to create its own operating system and optimize its chips for its own OS, cutting Microsoft out of the picture. Kind of like what Microsoft allegedly does to people who write applications for Windows.

John C. Dvorak

It wasn't until the Apple Macintosh that people understood what true hardware-software integration was about. It took one company to line it up: low-cost hardware, cool graphics, third-party products built on top of it, in an all-in-one attractive package that was accessible to consumer marketing.

Tony Fadell

Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster. (Or, sometimes known by] Grove [the head of Intel] giveth and Gates [the head of Microsoft] taketh away.)

Niklaus Wirth

Typical tech-driven companies or hardware-driven companies always lay out the so-called roadmaps when it comes to making the new hardware. So, in other words, availability of certain technologies dictates when the company is intending to make the new hardware.

Satoru Iwata

Overall, OS/2's problems fall into two categories: IBM and Microsoft.

Jean-Louis Gassee

If Microsoft is the new IBM, Google is the new Microsoft - the defining company of the industry.

Mitchell Kapor

Microsoft has gotten so big that it can put out a Preview that will install itself without checking first to see if it has expired. The message here is that Microsoft's time is worth more than yours.... no start-up company could get away with being that arrogant.

Jerry Pournelle

If you truly don't have competition, then zoom out until you can define some. Competition can be as simple as the reliance on the status quo, Microsoft (since at some point Microsoft will compete with everyone for everything), or researchers in universities. Pick something, because saying you have no competition at all is a nonstarter.

Guy Kawasaki

Microsoft's philosophy is to get it out there and fix it later. Steve [Jobs] would never do that. He doesn't get anything out there until it is perfected.

John Sculley

To me, it looks more or less like the hardware designers have run out of ideas and that they're trying to pass the blame for the future demise of Moore's Law to the software writers by giving us machines that work faster only on a few key benchmarks!

Donald Knuth

My mother always taught me that two wrongs don't make a right. We shouldn't bail out Wall Street. We shouldn't bail out Detroit. It will cost the economy more than the cost of the bailout which is more than the politicians think. We'll run into the hundred of millions to prop these companies up.

Peter Schiff

Microsoft's Windows 3.1, released in 1992, was the first truly successful edition of Windows and juiced the Redmond juggernaut. Apple's Macintosh System 7.5, released in 1994, was another in a string of versions that lacked key architectural features that the Mac didn't have until Steve Jobs returned and brought with him the code that became OS X.

Walt Mossberg

I think the idealism has always been marketing. Even back in the early days of Apple and the 'pirate' mentality, they were building a computer that they wanted to differentiate from IBM and Microsoft.

Brad Stone

If it weren't for Moore's law changing the playing field continuously, I would have been long gone. The rapid pace of hardware evolution still keeps things fresh for me.