JoshuaG
3 HN recommenders · recommended in 7 months, 2010–2024
12:06 · 1.9M views · Jan 29, 2006
Footage from the Macworld Boston 1997 keynote where Steve Jobs announces Apple's deal with Microsoft, with Bill Gates appearing on the big screen. The almost bankrupt Apple took Microsoft's investment, and the crowd reacted badly, including booing over Internet Explorer as the default browser.
HN returns to it as a legendary moment in tech history and as a precedent for strategic deals between rivals, such as in the Nokia and Microsoft story.
9 comments from Hacker News
What? A link to this story and no one linked to the legendary video of Bill Gates appearing on the big screen at the Macworld Boston Keynote 1997, looming large over Steve Jobs and the crowd booing? Here, I will do that: this video (skip to 3:30 if you want to see how the investment is received, skip to 4:40 if you want to see Bill Gates)
I've seen this many times, so great. Imagine Cook taking random developer's questions at WWDC today. In that same year, the famous Gates at the big screen speech. The audience was booing. Can you imagine something even close to that today? this video
How much in the minority am I for thinking this is a good plan for Nokia? Echoing my post in another thread, Apple received $150 million in financing from Microsoft back in 1997 in exchange for including IE on the Mac (among other partnership goodies). If you don't recall that period of computer history (when Apple almost went bust), you may want to watch this Steve Jobs Macworld 1997 presentation discussing their joint venture: this video "Kneeling before Zod" didn't turn out too badly for Apple.
All of this 'Nokia is doomed because of their Microsoft partnership' talk reminds me of when Apple announced something similar back in 1997. Anyone remember this Steve Jobs talk from when Apple was on the financial ropes? this video If you think Nokia is doomed, you might want to re-watch that video. Things didn't turn out quite so bad for Apple.
Mac OS 8.x and 9.x shipped with both Netscape and IE4, 4.5, then 5, but IE was the default for the "Browse the Web" alias on the Desktop of new installations. Mac OS X 10.0 shipped with a very early Carbonized IE 5.0 that was unstable enough to earn a "prerelease" label on the startup screen. At the time I remember a lot of people did actually prefer to use the Classic OS version of IE 5.0 over the IE beta, at least until OmniWeb 4.0 came out around the same time as OS X 10.1 [LINK] Announcing the browser deal is the only time I heard an entire crowd boo Stebe this video It's also amusing how Steve was still obviously using Concurrence instead of a Mac to do these early iCEO-era presentations [LINK]