[rbanffy]

> That was why Office was born in the first place.

Office was never "born". Not even designed as a suite. It was cobbled together. Word and Excel were independent products developed originally for the Mac. PowerPoint was acquired and Access developed internally.

> Either someone would have done much of the same things Microsoft did

Striking a deal with IBM, retaining the rights to the OS and cooperating with OEMs so they could clone their client's hardware? It takes a devious mind to come up with a plan like this.

> because computers would still be something you maybe used at work and that's about it

I don't know about you, but I had a lot of fun with my Apple II. Bill Gates had nothing to do with the popularization of the home computer. In fact, he may something to do with the demise of the home computer of the 80's and its replacement by bulky, noisy, beige boxes with 12-inch CGA monitors running MS-DOS (a most home-unfriendly OS). My Apple II+ had 2 screens, one 14" white monochrome soft-switching between the motherboard video and the 80-column card and a 17" color TV directly connected to the motherboard composite output. Sadly, the IIe could not do the same trick (I used to have text on one screen and graphics on the second)

[CamperBob]

Bill Gates had nothing to do with the popularization of the home computer.

Anyone heard of Microsoft BASIC? How about Applesoft?

Bueller...?

[rbanffy]

There were many competing implementations of BASIC interpreters at the time. If it weren't for Applesoft, Wozniak would have finished his floating-point BASIC (he did the Integer BASIC that came with the II). IIRC, Atari computers didn't use Microsoft BASIC, nor did the BBC family in the UK.

And, BTW, Paul Allen deserves more credit for MS BASIC than is usually given.