Bill Gates in 1983 Teen Beat Magazine

Slashdot ^

[bahblahbah]

These pictures are priceless.

[NautiNurse]

Three monitors in photo. Two IBM, one Mac.

[smith288]

Where do you think the original MS OS came from?

Xerox Parc...

[tutstar]

lol ping

[steveegg]

They were at my college in 1983.

It would have to have been a LISA (it was out in 1983; the Macs weren't announced until December 1983 and weren't released until January 1984). You can tell the difference in that the LISA (later renamed Macintosh XL) had its floppy drive(s) (either 5.25" or 3.5" depending on the model) to the right of the monitor, while the Macs (except the rebadged LISA) had its single floppy drive (strictly 3.5") underneath the monitor.

[pageonetoo]

Stop it with these pictures or I'm going to start a Laura, Ann, or Anna thread....

Hey, you broke the rule...

[dfwright]

The bootscreen on Windows 1.0 shows a 1985 date

Now that you point it out, you can see that is what is likely displayed on the screen in the one picture. Now that someone has found the tag in the jpg file pointing to the pictures being released in '85 with Windows 1.x, you've got it nailed.

[reagan_fanatic]

[rwfromkansas]

the photo was really from 1985.

[Constantine XIII]

OH, that little bitty one. Whoops! Missed it!

[Richard Kimball]

Man, I haven't thought of Zork in years.

Put string in brick
>The string is in the brick.

[XJarhead]

The key word is "tasteful".

[Thinkin' Gal]

~SHUDDER~

[Zebra]

The first Mac (a 128) was released to the broader public in January 1984. Gates undoubtedly had one much earlier, as Microsoft was writing software for Apple at the time. My recollection is that Jobs and Gates were collaborators on a number of things, so it is almost certain that Gates had one in 1983.

Whatever the timing, the computer behind Gates and to the right is a Mac (probably a 128 or 512).

[ArrogantBustard]

Scary! Dare I say...in those pictures he actually looks kind of ....cute? faggy. queer. gay. effete. effeminiate. limp wristed. unmanly.

[Nowhere Man]

Is that an Apple computer behind him or an IBM Lisa?

Looks like an early Mac. I know if it was 1983, it must have been just before the release on the Mac in January 1984. I do remember playing around with a Mac in December 1983 when I was in high school (one of the teachers had connections) before it was released. Maybe Gates got hold of one of those early releases, if my teacher could get a hold of one, even a 1983 Bill Gates would have some serious connections to get his hands on one.

[Semper Paratus]

A police mug shot of Gates from a 1977 arrest for bad driving

"A seventeen year-old vrigin who can't drive."

[Richard Kimball]

I forget the exact background, but MS was at one time working pretty heavily on the Mac interface for Apple. Excel started out as a Mac program, developed by MS, and Gates first big breakthrough was porting Excel to the PC. IIRC, this was when Windows 1.0 was in it's infancy, and Excel 1.0 for the PC came with a runtime version of Windows that loaded to run Excel. Excel destroyed Lotus 1-2-3, which had been the premiere spreadsheet at the time. BTW, Lotus 1-2-3 included the 1-2-3 because it was originally intended to be a spreadsheet, word processor and database.

Other Freeps may have more accurate info, but MS definitely contracted with Apple for development of the graphical interface, then used that knowledge to create Windows.

[steveegg]

I was refering to Prime Choice's recollection that his college had Macs in 1983, not Bill Gates's possession of one then. Also, it's already been established that the pictures in question came from 1985, not 1983 (note the touting of Windows 1.0, which came out in 1985).

That having been said, that definitely is a Mac (and it would have to be either the 128 or 512; they and the very-short-lived Mac XL, which looks a LOT different than the other 2 models, were the only models available in 1985).

[Nowhere Man]

They were at my college in 1983.

I was a junior in high school, we had one in December of 1983 although to me recollection, they were not released until January of 1984 but there were a lot of writeups, pictures and talk in the computer magazines at the time. I remember all of us faening over it, playing with the Mac Paint program and so on. 128K was the cooleat, a lot of RAM. My Apple //e had 128K but only 64K was usuable at the time but I could switch back and forth using "bank switching" due to the 8-bit microprocessor.

[BushisTheMan]

I worked on the Xerox Star. Best machine EVER for graphics and text processing.