Triumph of the Nerds: Riding the Bear

The film “Triumph of the Nerds: Riding the Bear” deals primary with the initial introduction of the Personal Computer (PC), and the rise of Microsoft as a major company the produces the world’s most widely use Operating System (OS).
After the Apple marketed one of the world’s first PCs, IBM too intended to enter the newly expanding PC market. IBM planned to used “Open Architecture” to come up with a PC within a year. They have almost everything, the keyboard, monitor etc, but they lack 1 thing, the OS and the computer language. Then two candidates came to mind, Bill Gates’ Microsoft and Gary Kildall’s Inter-galactic Digital Research. The most suitable candidate seemed to be Gary Kildall, nevertheless due to a stroke of luck, IBM turned away from Gary Kildall and instead choose Microsoft. It didn’t matter that Microsoft didn’t have an OS, but with only $50000, Microsoft bought an OS from an obscure small company and the rest was history. Microsoft was on the way to success…
IBM reaped a fortune during the first few years, but rivals soon appeared. IBM was losing ground in the now rapidly expanding PC market. But Microsoft was still doing great since most of the rival company’s of IBM bought their OS from them.
IBM fought back by creating the OS2, which was planned to overcome the clone issue. Microsoft’s business is being threaten, and they responded by creating Windows. A disagreement arose which soon caused the partnership between IBM and Microsoft to disintegrate.
For a while IBM dominated the PC market, but soon it returned to become a mainframe producing company. Microsoft on the other hand, while “riding the bear”, rose to the top in the end.