This leads into a section that I find interesting, where he envisions every useful application on computers having to do with CD-ROMs and their vast storage space.
He doesn't mention anything at all about networking, which is a very true to the story of how the last 10 years of his tenure as a chief at Microsoft turned out.
Microsoft succeeded in what he stated, creating software for computers that almost every home used, indeed with software on CD-ROM. However, the applications he envisioned - catalogs, phone books, maps - actually turned out run on the Internet, not local storage. The attempts to distribute things like catalogs on CD-ROM turned out to be cumbersome and expensive, and too difficult to keep updated. He mentions the vast storage space of CDs, but the effective storage space of a computer connected to the Internet dwarfs the capabilities of any local storage.
> He doesn't mention anything at all about networking ...
It was a blind spot for Gates and Microsoft in the 1980s. He wasn't alone, of course. People like Marshall McCluhan had laid out a vision for it years before but Gates was really focused on software for devices and not the network. It wasn't until the late 1980s that Microsoft turned its attention to Novell which was making a killing in PC networking. (Gates recruited Jim Allchin from network company Banyan in 1990.) By the mid-1990s there wasn't much left of Novell, but Microsoft's interest and strategy there was purely driven by business and not vision. That was clear when they were clobbered again by the Internet.
He doesn't mention anything at all about networking, which is a very true to the story of how the last 10 years of his tenure as a chief at Microsoft turned out.
Microsoft succeeded in what he stated, creating software for computers that almost every home used, indeed with software on CD-ROM. However, the applications he envisioned - catalogs, phone books, maps - actually turned out run on the Internet, not local storage. The attempts to distribute things like catalogs on CD-ROM turned out to be cumbersome and expensive, and too difficult to keep updated. He mentions the vast storage space of CDs, but the effective storage space of a computer connected to the Internet dwarfs the capabilities of any local storage.