In 1996, on this day Jean-Louis Gassée (pictured) reluctantly sold Be Inc. for $200 million (he wanted $275 million) after discovering that his buyer Apple Computer was on the verge of striking an alternative deal with his business rival Steve Jobs of NeXSTEP.

Apple Buys Be Inc.Earlier in the year, the board of Apple had taken a strategic decision about the development of the next generation new operating system, the Mac OS X. Fatefully, they had chosen to abandon an internal development project called Copland; instead of rewriting and modernizing the Macintosh operating system, the company would leapfrog this development by acquiring a new platform with many of the desired features. The two options quickly narrowed down to BeOS or OPENSTEP. And both operating systems were owned by former Apple Executives. Which was not to say that negotiations proceeded through open dialogue between buddies, because Jobs had not entered the building since his highly publicised exit in 1985. And Gassée was forced out after a political in-fight during 1990.

Yet matters took a decidely unexpected course. Retained after the purchase in an Advistory capacity, the acquisition was so integral to the strategic direction of the company that within just six months, Gassée had replaced Gil Amelio as Interim CEO. "A man in the desert doesn't bargain on the price of water" ~ Jean-Louis GasséeOnly later would a number of deeply disturbing facts emerge; that the bid for Be Inc. was hugely over-priced, because only $80 million had ever been invested in the company; that OPENSTEP was a proven technology, unlike BeOS; that Jobs had requested a position on the board but had only been offered an advisory position; and that the abandonment of Copland and its successors Gerschwin and Taligent disguised a genuine crisis inside Apple Computer.

By then it was too late to reverse these missteps, and in any case, Jobs had moved onto other rewarding projects. Ironically, Gassée, who had only ever wanted to make a tidy profit, would be forced to watch Jobs take a staggering $1.2 billion out of Pixar Animation Studios before stepping up to a full-time position on the board of that company's biggest customer, the Walt Disney Company. But such is the fine margin between dreams and nightmares.

In 2000, ending their search for adult supervision of the fledgling search giant Google, co-founders Larry Page and Serge Brin appointed Steve Jobs as CEO. Other candidates such as Intel's Andry Grove and Amazon's Jeff Bezos had been rejected by Venture capitalist John Doerr.

Apple Buys Be Inc. Part 2Only four years before, the former Macintosh Guru had almost re-joined Apple. But the acquisition of his company NeXSTEP fell through and the Board decided to purchase Be Inc from another former Apple executive, Jean-Louis Gassée.

Over the next dozen years, Apple would release innovative computers that dazzled the loyal followers of their niche customer market. Whereas Google would be transformed into a global retail giant. Impossibly long lines of consumers queuing up all night outside their chain of stores waiting to buy the next Google hand-held device.

In 2012, although Judge Colin Birss deemed Galaxy 10.1, 8.9 and 7.7 tablets "not as cool" as the iPad, the unlawful re-use of unique design features made it practically indistinguishable to the non-expert consumer and consequently the London court decision found that Apple's registered designs had indeed been infringed by its component supplier Samsung Electronics.

Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
By Ed & Brian HartmanAs expected Apple dismissed the possibility of licensing design to any "third party" contrary to the proposal that both companies "get a room" and find a resolution for the consumer. And in support of Samsung, those third parties (Google, Oracle, Motorola and Microsoft) rejected Apple's claim of innovating and competing with better products and services. Instead, they accused the company of seeking to destroy the market for Android devices through patent litigation. In a creative solution to the problem, it was Samsung that demonstrated innovation in the coming days; to retain its prominent place in the tablet market the South Korean based company announced a forthcoming new device codenamed the Galaxy 10 that would include an infrared projection feature for the keyboard.

In 2012, although Judge Colin Birss deemed Galaxy 10.1, 8.9 and 7.7 tablets "not as cool" as the iPad, the unlawful re-use of unique design features made it practically indistinguishable to the non-expert consumer and consequently the London court decision found that Apple's registered designs had indeed been infringed by its component supplier Samsung Electronics.

Apple Inc. v. Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
By Ed & Brian HartmanAs expected Apple dismissed the possibility of licensing design to any "third party" contrary to the proposal that both companies "get a room" and find a resolution for the consumer. And in support of Samsung, those third parties (Google, Oracle, Motorola and Microsoft) rejected Apple's claim of innovating and competing with better products and services. Instead, they accused the company of seeking to destroy the market for Android devices through patent litigation. In a creative solution to the problem, it was Samsung that demonstrated innovation in the coming days; to retain its prominent place in the tablet market the South Korean based company announced a forthcoming new device codenamed the Galaxy 10 that would include an infrared projection feature for the keyboard.

In 1993, determined to re-invent personal computing, Apple's head of advanced product development Jean-Louis Gassée [1] controversially delayed the release of the MessagePad 100 because it failed to meet the original design goals for the Newton.

Apple Newton DelayedThe catalyst was was the emergence of technical difficulties with the toolbox and application language for the Apple Newton. Because to provide a truly open platform for application development, further time was required to finalize "Dylan" a brand new very advanced programming language [2].

The end result was a larger, tablet sized product, with non-proprietary expansion ports, better syncing and an incredibly sophisticated handwriting recognition. Finally launched in 1995, the product transformed the metaphor for mobile computing. And of course it was a far cry from the luggable devices that Gassée had scrapped in the late 1980s.

In 1985, eighteen months after he survived a titanic board room struggle, Chairman Jack Tramiel of Commodore International took the step forward that he had been fighting tooth and nail for, announcing the release of the 900 model (pictured), a 16-bit microcomputer based on the Zilog Z8000 CPU that would take the competition to the Apple and IBM during the late 1980s.

Commodore 900A Polish immigrant and Auschwitz survivor, Tramiel had promised "computers for the masses, not the classes". To achieve this goal, he had driven Commodore to the edge of bankcrupcy, offering budget priced machines distributed through retail channels rather than authorized resellers. Following on from the success of the PET, the Commodore 64 was selling at the staggering rate of 400,000 units per month, and in fact a key issue for the company was finding a suitable successor to this runaway success. That would be the 900 model.

In 1980, disregarding the unduly cautious legal advice of his attorney Gerry Davis, operating system guru Gary Kildall of Digital Research, Inc. (DRI) took a snap business decision and signed a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) presented by the impatient IBM lead negotiator Jack Sams.

CP/M licensed for IBM PCsWith that routine formality out of the way, the IBM representatives visibly relaxed, and the historic meeting at Pacific Grove progressed into substantive discussions. The conclusion was an agreement to license CP/M-86 for the IBM PC, but it was a done deal after Tom Rolander demonstrated DRI's brilliant multi-tasking operating system.

Until the NDA was signed, the IBM representatives had been unwilling to reveal their plans. Because their one-year accelerated product-to-market plan ("Project Chess") was dependent upon the taking of a strategic decision to drop their first choice Motorola chip. This judgement was central to the negotiations because DRI's MP/M-86 already worked on the second choice Intel 16-bit model (the operating system had actually been developed two years before).

Inevitably, the most sensitive aspect of the negotation was commercial. Because IBM opened bidding with a ludicrous offer of the one-off payment of $250,000 unaware that CP/M was generating annualised sales of $6m. Eventually, they settled on the scalar formula that would make Rowlander and Kildall (pictured) fabulously wealthy, a royalty price of $10 per license. After this business was concluded, three quite startling facts emerged.

• Kildall and Rowlander had been scheduled to fly to meet with a CP/M distributor. Fortunately, the meeting had been cancelled because Kildall's wife Dororthy was notoriously hesitant to sign NDAs without her husband present.
• DRI was scheduled to meet with representatives of IBM's competitor, Hewlett Packard that very afternoon.
• IBM had made the lazy assumption that a company in Seattle owned CP/M. Amazingly, Jack Sams and his colleague Pat Harrington had even contacted a couple of "long-hairs" who had been reluctantly forced to admit they did not own the operating system and instead referred the IBM-ers to DRI.

In 1993, in the far-reaching "look and feel copyright" precedent ruling of Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corporation, San Francisco federal Judge Vaughn Walker rejected Microsoft's argument that the dispute was a contractual matter relating to the original licensing agreement for Windows version 1.0. Instead, he found in favour of original design manufacturers who were entitled to "get patent-like protection for the idea of a graphical user interface (GUI), or the idea of a desktop metaphor [under copyright law]."..

GUI Wars
By Ed, Brian Hartman, John E. Bredehoft & Stan BrinHowever the main beneficiary would be Xerox Corporation who had launched the first GUI computer called Star in 1981 (pictured). Because the Apple design team had been invited to view Star at the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) research lab and these visits had been very influential on the development of the Macintosh which was launched two years later in 1983.

During 1990 the same judge had presided over a case in which Xerox had been denied $150m. However Apple Computer, Inc. v. Microsoft Corporation redefined the "originality" argument proposed by Apple that while the individual components were not original, the complete GUI was. During the case, Apple had been forced to admit licensing many of its representations from Xerox opening the wider debate of whether copyright protection only extends to original expression.

In 1981, on this day IBM announced its first Personal Computer: model number 5150, the creation of a team of engineers and designers under the direction of Don Estridge of the Entry Systems Division in Boca Raton, Florida.

IBM announce their first PC: model number 5150Featuring 64 kB of RAM, a single 5.25-inch floppy drive and monitor the system (pictured) would sell for US $3,005. And yet Estridge would never have been able to achieve this price point without the support of key supply chain partners, the Intel Corporation's 16-bit model chip, the CP/M muli-tasking operating system from Digital Research, Inc and of course Microsoft Basic (CP/M was non-exclusively licensed to IBM for a $10 per unit royalty free, Microsoft Basic also shipped onboard competitor products such as the Tandy TRS-80 already selling in Radio Shack stores).

Due to their earlier release, widespread acceptance and of course DRI's brilliant multi-tasking operating system, the IBM PC and its clones dominated the market even after the launch of the technically advanced Apple Macintosh. Early sales of that product would remain disappointingly flat until a power struggle on the board of directors was resolved on May 24th, 1985. President John Sculley was forced out, placing control of the pioneering company in the hands of the visionary Steve Jobs, the head of the Macintosh division who Sculley had been attempting to outster. Unbeknown to Sculley, Jobs had learnt from his early mistakes. He now believed that he had leap-frogged the problem with the ground-breaking concept of a truly personal computer that could potentially render IBM's desktop unit hopelessly obsolete long before the decade was out.

In 1980, on this day the business-oriented personal computer code-named "Sara" was first announced and released as the Apple III (pictured).

Launch of Apple III Captures Business Computing MarketShipping as standard with the true typewriter-style upper/lowercase keyboard and eighty column display feature set demanded by business users, the Information Analyst bundle also included expansion drives and a choice of thermal printers for a complete solution to IT requirements of a modern office. Because the Apple III was the first product launch since the incorporation of the company (the Apple II predated the formation of the company) the success was all the more remarkable. And the chance discovery of a complex design flaw had even triggered a tumultuous power struggle inside the organization that firmly positioned the company in the business, rather than the consumer, market space.

The Head of the Macintosh division was a twenty-five year old College drop-out called Steve Jobs. Without undertaking any due diligence, he pursued the dream of minutarization by insisting that the unit was fitted with a heat sink instead of a CPU fan and air vents. However this challenging design failed to expel all the heat from the unit and case designer Jerry Manock unfairly took the blame. However he managed to demonstrate that under prolonged testing solder began to melt and run across the cramped "fineline" technology motherboard (this motherboard was itself a largely unproven component and also selected by Jobs to fit the case size on the untested assumption that it would be fully tested by the supplier). But rogue connections were created and of course the result was unexpected malfunction. Fortunately, this design flaw was detected before the launch and a daughterboard introduced for the secondary components. But of course the issue highlighted the reckless decisions taken by Jobs. He was forced out of managerial duties and although he remained a co-owner he was replaced by Manock.

In 2012, on this day the Chief Executive Officer of Apple Steve Jobs demonstrated the iPAD Mini a seven inch version of the popular tablet computer and more significantly a killer product directly targetted at the Android and Kindle Fire consumer markets.

Launch of the iPAD Mini
By Ed & Brian HartmanA break with the traditional single product version ethos, not to mention a flip-flop from previous announcements ("7in tablets should come with sandpaper so users can file down their fingers" and "One naturally thinks that a 7-inch screen would offer 70 per cent of the benefits of a 10-inch screen .. this is far from the truth. Seven-inch screens are 45 per cent as large as an iPad. This size isn't sufficient for making great tablet apps") the launch of a new content consumption device that could fit inside a jacket pocket was a competitive response to both the alleged theft of Apple's intellectual property and also the commercial success of Android-powered 7" tablets. With a screen resolution half the size of the Retina Display touting iPad, developers could easily shrink existing apps and still retain their look and feel without major reprogramming effort. And the all-day battery was a compelling feature of this new electronic travelling companion.

Of course, by the time that Amazon unbundled Android from the Kindle Fire, Windows 8 was on general release and the market entered a new phase, a straight dogfight between Apple and Microsoft.

In 1986, the knives were out for the management of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration even before their Space Shuttle Challenger returned to Earth.

Mission STS-51-LDue to the cold weather, two O-Rings had failed to seal on one of the Solid Rocket Boosters (SRBs). Fortunately, solid fuel had formed a crust which protected the seal. Had this Aluminium Slag not held the SRBs in place, the booster cylinder would have impacted the external tank area. It was an accidental contingency that had miraculously saved from disaster the twenty-fifth flight of the American Space Shuttle program.

Engineers had been alarmed by earlier flights pointing the finger directly at management-driven schedule pressures. And the dispute in the Agency would soon leak upwards into a governing Republican Party bidding to replace Ronald Reagan with a GOP successor in the White House. The complacency within the leadership of NASA was beginning to gain acknowledgement. But cancelling the Shuttle program was not politically acceptable, not after spending $7 billion and building 5 machines, plus designing a space station around it. Of more immediate concern though was a four-man mission scheduled for May 1986 in which a shuttle was to carry a Centaur filled with explosive hydrogen to boost the unmanned spacecraft Galileo to the Planet Jupiter...

In 1995, on this day the struggling Italian computer manufacturer Olivetti released the Envision 400/P75, a full multimedia PC for the living room that would transform the home computing experience.

Release of the Olivetti EnvisionA combination of Italian style and engineering talent in Ivrea had overcome the considerable challenges in conjugating innovation with quality standards in order to produce a home computing appliance for non-computer savvy people. Designed to resemble a videocassette recorder, the Envision bucked the trend in a diminishing PC market by convincing late adopting consumers that computers were not impossibly hard to use.

The Envision shipped with a choice of two processors: one based on the Intel 486 DX4 100mhz processor and one based on the Intel Pentium P75 processor. It had an infrared keyboard and an internal modem, and it was compatible with audio CDs, CD-ROMs, Photo CDs and Video CDs. It came with preinstalled programs that would allow it work as a fax, an answering machine when connected to the telephone line. It also had three possible operating modes: simple mode (limited to the use of an infrared remote control to control the volume and the reproduction of photo, video or audio CDs); intermediate mode (with a simplified Windows shell replacement called Olipilot that gave access to a limited set of programs); advanced (the standard Windows 95 graphical user interface).

In 1980, on this day commercial discussions with the little parts supplier Microsoft collapsed over IBM's boneheaded demand for an exclusive license to their disk operating system.

Talks between IBM and Microsoft collapseBut the broader issue was really one of vision because the long-haired visionary programmers Paul Allen and Bill Gates were pretty outspoken in their advocacy of an IBM PC powered by a Motorola 68000 chipset and running Xenix, a Microsoft implementation of Unix.

And the problem was that the IBM Executives were just thinking about the numbers, long-term profitability and how to compete favourably with rival products such as the Apple Computer and the Radio Shack's TRS-80. In fact they had only sought out little parts suppliers such as Microsoft and Intel for the sole purpose of reaching a sub-$3,000 price point. Reluctant to change course and embrace an open commercial and technical partnership, IBM reverted to the trusted in-house model, re-designing the PC architecture on the IBM 801 CPU and its own Unix.

IBM regretted their obstinate decision because they were unable to squeeze their in-house design under the sub-$3,000 price point (a task requiring small company agility not available at the Entry Systems Division in Boca Raton, Florida). And while the IBM project went no where fast, Allen and Gates banged their head against the same wall with Hewlett Packard before seeking out same-sized start-up companies that shared a common mindset.

In 1979, a planned three-day visit to the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) facilities by Apple Engineers Steve Jobs and Jef Raskin was cancelled by Xerox because of new commercial restrictions of access placed on the Alto prototype computer.

Xerox take advantage of the Alto ComputerThe two companies had been discussing a proposal under which Xerox granted Apple engineers three days of access to the PARC facilities in return for the option to buy 100,000 shares (800,000 split-adjusted shares) of Apple at the pre-IPO price of $10 a share. However this deal was scuppered by PARC researcher Larry Tessler.

Developed in 1973, the Alto was the first computer to use the desktop metaphor and mouse-driven graphical user interface (GUI). Unable to position the Alto as the ground-breaking device of a new technology era, he finally managed to persuade his bone-headed bosses to see that such computers were the photocopiers of the future. The device was then placed under restricted commercial access, and the final painful steps taken in the development of a marketable product.