Satya Nadella Appointed Microsoft CEO as Bill Gates Shifts from Chairman to 'Technology Advisor'

[bumblebritches5]

I'm excited for what the Nadella + Gates duo can do!


Except the board asked him to get the most value for Nokia, and he arguably did. Nokia couldn't compete with the likes of Samsung, but they could let their phone division get purchases, milk Microsoft, and in a few years when the Phone OS wars have died down, start making new phones with the "victor"'s OS.



He's actually very much a "product guy", just not a product that you see on a daily basis. He's basically the father of the xbox backend, as well as the driving force behind one of the main competitors for amazon cloud services. No, he didn't invent an iPod, but he's responsible for an entire division within Microsoft.


To the contrary! The Zune was one of the best mp3 players to market. It was too late, not supported well, marketed terribly, but ask anyone who used a Zune and an iPod, and they'll tell you that the Zune is better. What Microsoft needs are more Zune's, but with a better marketing team

As a person that's had two Zune's and two iPod Touches, I think I'm uniquely positioned to respond and the Zune wasn't a bad media player, and I especially liked the UI and scroll wheel in the later Zune's, but Microsoft's marketing was shockingly terrible, you had to get used to the desktop software, and until you did it was weird (I'm talking about the later desktop software, not the strange 1.0 WMP+ original player) but Microsoft had nothing on Apple when it came to apps, battery life, etc (the 16:9 screen was nice though.)

 

[Gudi]

It's hypocritical because earlier in the thread the guy was saying MS does nothing but copy. Then it's pointed out Apple is also a second mover. So he backtracks on his argument by saying it doesn't matter who creates the tech, all that matters is who capitalizes and mass markets it.

Apple is NOT a second mover on the Macintosh. They opened up the market. Xerox invented GUI-computing and Apple created the market for GUI-computing.

But the initial argument gudi made was that Apple was first.

First to market.

And when they weren't first. They were still first because they were what popularized it. In his statement, The Xerox wasn't technically the first because it was Apple that popularized it, so they should get credit for being first.

First to market.

Its completely irrelevant to him that Xerox had their products out first since it didn't have mass appeal.

You need to ask yourself, why didn't it have mass appeal? So you couldn't write your own apps for the Star, only Xerox could. Which means from a user point of view it wasn't really a general-purpose computer, more like a single-purpose machine with a fixed firmware. That is like having the first touch-screen phone, but without the necessary AppStore. Without that little thing, its clearly not the starting point of the smartphone revolution. The iPhone (3G) is.

The counter argument that everyone else is saying, is that it's hogwash. First to invent something is first to invent something, regardless of popular appeal.

If its not flying, its not an airplane. And I'm not saying that Apple invented all the technologies, they incorporate into exiting new products. What I am saying is, that the finished product with its defined use case and the market for it, are creations of Apple.

Apple might have been the first company to mass market a PC with a GUI and mouse to the average consumer of the time.

This is what I'm saying.

But they were NOT the first with a GUI and a mouse. Doesn't discount what they did do for the industry.

Fine. Now can we come back to my original point? Microsoft like no one else looks out for what other companies are already successful with and tries to take over these existing markets and customers. Rarely they try to create new markets and fulfill needs not yet served by anyone else. Ironically out of all things the tablet was an idea Microsoft pursued before anyone else did. They just couldn't bring it to live, because the used way too much old desktop PC technology. And the Surface continues this mistake by being a hybrid between both worlds.

 

[Renzatic]

I have a degree in computer science and even I rather want to use a computer which is easier to use. The market growth is with user-friendly iPads, single taskingly showing only one full-screen app at a time and in doing so drastically reducing any possibility of wrong usage.

Who would've thought that after all this time spent futzing around with multitasking, we would've come to the conclusion that DOS style application interactions were the way to go.

As the proud holder of a degree in computer sciences, you should be well aware that ease of use is only part of the equation. Functionality is of equal importance. Because if your computer can't do what you need it to do, it doesn't matter how easy it is to use otherwise. It doesn't address your needs.

For some things, iOS is great. But when you start getting into projects that require working between multiple applications, it becomes very cumbersome very fast.

The perfect OS isn't about protecting end users from themselves. It's about making it so elegant you don't need to.

 

[Liquorpuki]

Apple is NOT a second mover on the Macintosh. They opened up the market. Xerox invented GUI-computing and Apple created the market for GUI-computing.

GUI computing is not a market. PC is a market. OS is a market. Nobody goes to the store and asks, can I buy a GUI computing?

And if you want to argue mass market commercial success is the only thing that matters, then it's IBM that blew up the PC market, not Apple.

Fine. Now can we come back to my original point? Microsoft like no one else looks out for what other companies are already successful with and tries to take over these existing markets and customers. Rarely they try to create new markets and fulfill needs not yet served by anyone else.

Apple doesn't create new markets. It disrupts existing ones and blows them up.

Everything MS's been doing lately is geared toward the same kind of disruption. That PC/tablet hybrid is geared toward disrupting the tablet status quo. The XB1 was originally intended to disrupt the console business model by leveraging digital distribution, which is the same way Apple took over the MP3 player and smartphone markets. The creation of Azure and porting of IP to the cloud is how they're disrupting the local computing paradigm and positioning themselves for the future.

 

[Gudi]

But, Then again, if all the options you have is to "burn" or "not burn". you' don't really have a very advanced platform now do you? There's trade off with simplicity of UI. You lose out functionality.

And the magic is to keep it simple, while allowing complexity.

I know I would rather have a screen that looks like that as an options menu, than have absolutely no way of customizing how my software actually works.

Than you are not a trained Mac user. The goal is to make it "just work" not to make it customizable. Often you can eliminate an option by eliminating the problem which made you want an option. Let the user make decisions only when he needs to.

Plus, "OK" saves current options and closes window. "Apply" just applies the current options and keeps the window open. It's not that complex of a formula.

Its considerably more complex than having no buttons at all and applying all the changes instantly. System Preferences in OS X works fine without those three buttons, so why defend their existence? They need to die.

I just realized you were responding to Gudi, who has been notoriously wrong about most things and has often pushed that his opinions are more important and right than facts.

The thing has a name, its called an Reality Distortion Field (RDF). And it has reality changing properties. Like it or not, the Mac is outgrowing the PC, because of usability. And Windows 8 is not catching fire, because of usability.

 

[Gudi]

My point was to the guy who seems to think Apple invented everything.

Not everything, MP3-Players were a thing well before the iPod. Bizarrely Apple often gets credit for "inventing" the iPod, but not for inventing everything else. The smartphone and tablet markets would not exist today without Apple leading the way with iOS. It's outright lunatic to deny that.

GUI computing is not a market. PC is a market. Nobody goes to the store and asks, can I buy a GUI computing?

Because it is implicit that all PCs use GUI computing.

And if you want to argue mass market commercial success is the only thing that matters, then it's IBM that blew up the PC market, not Apple.

If you think anyone cares who invented the PC with command line interface, than you are wrong.

This thing did nothing to drive computer development.

The PC killed IBM.​

The PC was the kind of computer who made IBM abandon computer manufacturing altogether. They lost the business when they licensed the OS from Microsoft. They never made the whole product and lost the market. With the PC, IBM degraded itself to a mere hardware supplier. As one of several OEMs they had no chance to survive.

 

[IJ Reilly]

The PC was the kind of computer who made IBM abandon computer manufacturing altogether. They lost the business when they licensed the OS from Microsoft. They never made the whole product and lost the market. With the PC, IBM degraded itself to a mere hardware supplier. As one of several OEMs they had no chance to survive.

Time to make another gross oversimplification call.

The IBM-PC was designed as essentially a rear-guard action for IBM's mainframe business. They were really not intending to do much with it except make life difficult for Apple, or anyone else who might make inroads into their territory with desktop computers. They did not actually license the OS from Microsoft but hired them to produce it under contract. IBM also allowed Microsoft to sell it under their name. IBM had reason to not be concerned about this because the PC architecture was at least partially protected by copyright. That part was the ROM-BIOS. When it was reverse-engineered by Compaq and then others, all hell (the clone market) broke loose. You are right that they had little chance of competing in the PC hardware commodity market that resulted, but not about how it came about. I think it is important to keep in mind that was never IBM's plan to only sell PC hardware. It was all a big historical accident, really.

 

[Renzatic]

The smartphone and tablet markets would not exist today without Apple leading the way with iOS. It's outright lunatic to deny that.

Even iOS is an iterative extension of everything that came before it. Grid of icons, settings menus, even the app store, they all had their precursors in other mobile and PDA OSes.

I won't deny that Apple blew the doors off the mobile market, and are directly responsible for its popularity today. But...eh. I'm just tired of all the fawning and gushing, I guess.

 

[Liquorpuki]

Not everything, MP3-Players were a thing well before the iPod. Bizarrely Apple often gets credit for "inventing" the iPod, but not for inventing everything else. The smartphone and tablet markets would not exist today without Apple leading the way with iOS. It's outright lunatic to deny that.

Why would it be bizarre for Apple to get credit for inventing the iPod? Who else would you give credit to?

Smartphone market existed before the iPhone - go ask anyone who owned a Treo, BB, or WM handset. Tablet market existed in niche form before the iPad was created. Apple didn't create either of these markets - they just blew them up.

Because it is implicit that all PCs use GUI computing.
If you think anyone cares who invented the PC with command line interface, than you are wrong.

Anyone who understands that CLI was once the only commercially available solution cares. Arguing that anything pre-GUI is irrelevant is myopic.

And if you're gonna use phrases like first to market, then you should refer to actual markets, not features like you've been doing.

This thing did nothing to drive computer development.

That product's architecture caused hardware commoditization, driving down the price of PC's, making it affordable to put one in every home and standardizing the industry. You wanna use blowing up a market as a qualifier for what's good, there you go.

 

[kdarling]

Just a couple of notes:

Apple is NOT a second mover on the Macintosh. They opened up the market. Xerox invented GUI-computing and Apple created the market for GUI-computing.

The GUI market was already on its way. As Steve Jobs put it about his 1979 visit to Xerox:

"And within – you know – ten minutes it was obvious to me that all computers would work like this some day. It was obvious. You could argue about how many years it would take. You could argue about who the winners and losers might be. You could’t argue about the inevitability, it was so obvious."

So he was convinced it was coming, whether Apple sold it first or not.

And in fact, the same guy who was a core inventor of the GUI, left Xerox and created the GEM graphical environment first demoed on a PC at Comdex in 1984, and later used on the Atari ST in 1985.

You need to ask yourself, why didn't it have mass appeal? So you couldn't write your own apps for the Star, only Xerox could.

That's incorrect. Both the Alto and Star could be programmed using one of the first integrated development environments. To quote Jobs again, about his 1979 visit to Xerox and seeing Smalltalk on the Alto:

"One of the things they showed me was object oriented programming ..."

The Star shipped with both Smalltalk and Mesa (which helped inspire Java).

 

[bawbac]

That also wasn't a part of Windows during the days of record empty disc sales.
And you find that obvious? I know people who click 'Apply' just before they click 'OK' just to make sure the changes do get applied. This anxiety only exists because changes are not applied automatically when made. Why does the window have an 'X' button, when the two ways of closing it are either 'OK' or 'Cancel'? Does 'X' the same as 'Cancel' or is 'Apply'+'X' the same as 'OK'?

It was obvious to me and billions of other and I never read a Windows OS manual.

Just like it's obvious in iOS that hovering your finger over a word can be used to select/edit it but I won't go over all the difficulty of using iOS.

 

[Gudi]

They did not actually license the OS from Microsoft but hired them to produce it under contract.

But Microsoft told them, they already had an OS ready and than only after signing the contract, Microsoft bought QDOS (Quick and Dirty OS) and renamed it DOS (no longer Quick, but still Dirty). So the innovative part on the side of Microsoft was, to sell/licence the same OS again and again to different OEMs. There wasn't much new produced in the beginning.

IBM had reason to not be concerned about this because the PC architecture was at least partially protected by copyright. That part was the ROM-BIOS. When it was reverse-engineered by Compaq and then others, all hell (the clone market) broke loose.

When they signed the contract with Microsoft to "produce" an OS for the PC, Microsoft explicitly retained the right to sell the OS to other hardware makers. So it was clear from the beginning that IBM wouldn't remain the only one to build IBM-compatible PCs.

I think it is important to keep in mind that was never IBM's plan to only sell PC hardware. It was all a big historical accident, really.

Because IBM underestimated the future importance of individual persons buying computers compared to traditional business customers. That's what makes it so odd to name them the inventor of the PC. They didn't saw it coming.

 

[Gudi]

Even iOS is an iterative extension of everything that came before it. Grid of icons, settings menus, even the app store, they all had their precursors in other mobile and PDA OSes.

The Brothers Wright didn't invent wing-profiles or aircraft-engines. The first ever aircraft was an iterative extension of everything that came before it and so is every invention.

I won't deny that Apple blew the doors off the mobile market, and are directly responsible for its popularity today.

The mobile market existed thanks to Motorola. But mobile phones went from single-purpose computers to general-purpose computers. With the iPhone featurephones became smartphones and device features became individually installed apps.

 

[Avatar74]

He should throw these on. I'd like to see how he looks in them. Image
Image

As an Indian man myself, I have no idea what you are implying.

 

[Renzatic]

The Brothers Wright didn't invent wing-profiles or aircraft-engines. The first ever aircraft was an iterative extension of everything that came before it and so is every invention.

Exactly. Everyone deserves their bit of credit, and no one is a sacred cow. Apple didn't invent the Mac, the iPhone, the iPad in a vacuum. They lifted the concepts and inventions of others to get to where they're at today. So why cry foul when someone does the exact same thing to Apple? Why are they somehow exempt from the process? Why accuse one company of copying, while praising another as an innovator for doing the exact same thing?

 

[Michael Goff]

Not everything, MP3-Players were a thing well before the iPod. Bizarrely Apple often gets credit for "inventing" the iPod, but not for inventing everything else. The smartphone and tablet markets would not exist today without Apple leading the way with iOS. It's outright lunatic to deny that.
Because it is implicit that all PCs use GUI computing.
If you think anyone cares who invented the PC with command line interface, than you are wrong.

This thing did nothing to drive computer development.

Image

The PC killed IBM.​

The PC was the kind of computer who made IBM abandon computer manufacturing altogether. They lost the business when they licensed the OS from Microsoft. They never made the whole product and lost the market. With the PC, IBM degraded itself to a mere hardware supplier. As one of several OEMs they had no chance to survive.

They wouldn't exist as they are today, but they certainly would exist. :|

 

[Gudi]

Why would it be bizarre for Apple to get credit for inventing the iPod? Who else would you give credit to?

No one, its not a new invention. The ClickWheel is an invention, but it doesn't stop the iPod from being just another MP3-Player like dozens before. Only in combination with iTunes, iPod+iTunes may be regarded as new invention.

Smartphone market existed before the iPhone - go ask anyone who owned a Treo, BB, or WM handset.

These were failed attempts to create a smartphone at best. Most of them are high-end feature phones with more fancy features. Others tried to bring the desktop computing metaphor on a phone with a start button on the taskbar. A smartphone doesn't have tasks. It has fully automated process and file management otherwise it isn't a smartphone.

Tablet market existed in niche form before the iPad was created. Apple didn't create either of these markets - they just blew them up.

Tablet-PCs existed before and not as a niche, but as a failed and abandoned form factor of desktop computers with added touch-screens. These were not tablets.

Anyone who understands that CLI was once the only commercially available solution cares. Arguing that anything pre-GUI is irrelevant is myopic.

Anything pre-GUI is irrelevant for computers becoming personal computers. The command-line interface and its huge knowledge requirements made computers something for circles of experts, not for individuals to use them on their own.

And if you're gonna use phrases like first to market, then you should refer to actual markets, not features like you've been doing.

I refer to the PC market of course and for me that is market of computers following the concept of the original Macintosh. This machine defined what a PC is. It had the exact same category shaping importance of the iPhone and iPod.

That product's architecture caused hardware commoditization, driving down the price of PC's, making it affordable to put one in every home and standardizing the industry. You wanna use blowing up a market as a qualifier for what's good, there you go.

I couldn't care less about blowing up a market. Of course the free to use Android would outnumber the not for licensing iOS. We knew that right from the beginning. That doesn't change a bit that the iPhone shaped the product category and that everything else is a me-too product. The Macintosh isn't the first to market PC because it was commercially more successful, but because the Xerox Star wasn't even directed at home users. Its commercial failure is only indicative of it not yet being the whole package, despite having a GUI. And the commercial success of IBM-compatibles is only indicative of the inevitable price wars after a new product category is understood and accepted by the market.

 

[IJ Reilly]

But Microsoft told them, they already had an OS ready and than only after signing the contract, Microsoft bought QDOS (Quick and Dirty OS) and renamed it DOS (no longer Quick, but still Dirty). So the innovative part on the side of Microsoft was, to sell/licence the same OS again and again to different OEMs. There wasn't much new produced in the beginning.
When they signed the contract with Microsoft to "produce" an OS for the PC, Microsoft explicitly retained the right to sell the OS to other hardware makers. So it was clear from the beginning that IBM wouldn't remain the only one to build IBM-compatible PCs.
Because IBM underestimated the future importance of individual persons buying computers compared to traditional business customers. That's what makes it so odd to name them the inventor of the PC. They didn't saw it coming.

I wrote one paragraph, a reasonably cogent explanation of a single topic. Having it broken up into three thoughtlets for purposes of response is annoying. Please don't do that. Sorry, this is pet peeve of mine. To the subject:

Depending on who tells the story, Microsoft either did or did not know where they'd get the source code to build DOS before IBM contracted with them. My understanding is they did know who had the needed code, but they only purchased it after they'd committed to IBM. This was a huge gamble, if nothing else. Still, QDOS needed to be heavily recoded for the IBM hardware, a process that took about a year. Yes, Microsoft retained the right to sell it under their own name, but this was a meaningless reservation at the time. It only turned out to be meaningful after Compaq figured out how to reverse-engineer the ROM-BIOS and survived IBM's legal challenge. It was by no means clear that IBM would lose this control; in fact, it was completely unknown at the time because not only had it not happened yet, IBM had gone to considerable lengths to prevent it, and they fought it as best they could afterwards. I've never heard IBM credited as the "inventor" of the PC. Lots of other personal computers were on the market at the time, something IBM most certainly saw as a threat. The IBM-PC was their response to that threat. The great irony is that if the IBM-PC hadn't carried the IBM name, and if it hadn't been cloned, it might well have been consigned to the dustbin of technological history.

----------

Another look at the Nadella appointment:

The conventional wisdom that emerged in recent days about Satya Nadella boiled to a simple, singular word that was repeated over and over again:

Safe.

The 22-year Microsoft was the "safe choice" to be the third chief executive in Microsoft history. The simple judgment wasn't intended to be harsh. But it also wasn't meant to be flattering.

The people saying it were generally Wall Street analysts and investors who had hoped the company would find a guru from the outside to replace retiring CEO Steve Ballmer.

They wanted someone who would shake up Microsoft. Maybe sell off some things like the consumer business. Or the Xbox. Something. Anything.

"To this point, since Mr. Ballmer announced his intent to retire last August there has been rampant speculation and optimism that Microsoft would use this as a golden opportunity to bring in an outsider and innovator that could change the direction of the company," wrote Daniel Ives, an analyst at FBR Capital Markets Research, in a note to clients. "Instead, the board looked right down the hall from Mr. Ballmer's office and found its next CEO with a core/home grown Microsoft insider."

http://www.latimes.com/business/tec...ya-nadella-challenges-20140204,0,961650.story

 

[Gudi]

The GUI market was already on its way. As Steve Jobs put it about his 1979 visit to Xerox:

"And within – you know – ten minutes it was obvious to me that all computers would work like this some day. It was obvious. You could argue about how many years it would take. You could argue about who the winners and losers might be. You could’t argue about the inevitability, it was so obvious."

So he was convinced it was coming, whether Apple sold it first or not.

Yes it was obvious to him, as it was to every open-minded person. But others denied it and were not so sure about the prospects of this new so-called "mouse".

Remember when the iPhone came out, business experts (like Steve Ballmer) couldn't believe that a phone without a keyboard would appeal to business customers. And he saw it as an email machine, not a general-purpose computer. And even Steve Jobs "enemy of success" didn't want to open the platform for native third-party apps initially, which is the key-feature of being a smartphone. There's an app for that.

That's incorrect. Both the Alto and Star could be programmed using one of the first integrated development environments.

And was Xerox putting the IDE in the bundle when you bought a Star? Did the few business customers who could afford a Star use it like a general-purpose computer or more like a business machine with a fixed firmware?

However, we would have GUI-computing without Apple. There is no doubt about that. But almost every other company would have targeted them at businesses not individuals. And till today all other companies still concentrate on improving specs and price not usability and experience. Computers would look a lot different today without Apple. Even those who are not from Apple are much more personal thanks to Apple.

 

[Gudi]

Yes, Microsoft retained the right to sell it under their own name, but this was a meaningless reservation at the time. It only turned out to be meaningful after Compaq figured out how to reverse-engineer the ROM-BIOS and survived IBM's legal challenge. It was by no means clear that IBM would lose this control; in fact, it was completely unknown at the time because not only had it not happened yet, IBM had gone to considerable lengths to prevent it, and they fought it as best they could afterwards.

I'm willing to give Bill Gates credit for not making meaningless reservations in contracts. His father is a lawyer so he knew what he was signing. Of course he couldn't know how big the PC clone market would become. But he intended to not put all eggs in one basket and bet the house on IBM. He planed to make use of other hardware opportunities. He saw software as independent from hardware and portable from one platform to another. It's quite a shift for them to now make their own Surface hardware.

 

[IJ Reilly]

I'm willing to give Bill Gates credit for not making meaningless reservations in contracts. His father is a lawyer so he knew what he was signing. Of course he couldn't know how big the PC clone market would become. But he intended to not put all eggs in one basket and bet the house on IBM. He planed to make use of other hardware opportunities. He saw software as independent from hardware and portable from one platform to another. It's quite a shift for them to now make their own Surface hardware.

Not only could he not know how large the PC clone market would be, he'd have to be a magician to guess (let alone, know) that it would even exist. This period of tech history is heavily documented. I have read a great deal about it, and I have yet to see anyone report that Bill Gates knew the unknowable.

 

[Gudi]

It was obvious to me and billions of other and I never read a Windows OS manual.

It's not obvious, you're just used to it. You learned how it works. After you've learned something, it seams easy to you and you can't understand, why others need to go to driving school to learn that they always need to be aware which gear they are in. Driving a car remains an activity which requires skill, whether you are aware of it or not.

Now you could build a car which requires much less skill, because it has an automatic gear box and because it always drives forward not backward and turns right but not left. This car is easier to use for beginners as well as for experienced drivers. But only beginners will realize right away how much easier it is.

Some delivery firms require their drivers to turn three times right instead of turning left on crossroads. Not because they employ new drivers, but because crossing oncoming traffic is always dangerous. Turning three times right achieves the same as turning left once, at a lot less damage repair costs.

The same goes for software usability and customer support costs.

 

[Gudi]

Not only could he not know how large the PC clone market would be, he'd have to be a magician to guess (let alone, know) that it would even exist. This period of tech history is heavily documented. I have read a great deal about it, and I have yet to see anyone report that Bill Gates knew the unknowable.

You've said it took them about a year to recode QDOS for IBM hardware. How long would it take them to recode it again for some one else's hardware? By retaining the meaningless reservation to sell the OS we've just sold you to someone else (who's in competition with you), Microsofts earns twice and their success becomes independent from IBMs success. Sounds like a plan. The hardware compatibility only reduced the amount of software adaptation necessary. But Microsoft never planed to work with IBM as their only customer for this product.

 

[kdarling]

Yes it was obvious to him, as it was to every open-minded person. But others denied it and were not so sure about the prospects of this new so-called "mouse".

It all depended on what that person wanted to do with a computer.

Some had no use for a mouse. Keyboard shortcuts were fine.

Others had more use for a pen pad or some other type of input.

However, we would have GUI-computing without Apple. There is no doubt about that. But almost every other company would have targeted them at businesses not individuals.

Atari ST. Amiga. I think individuals jumped on GUIs quicker than businesses.

And till today all other companies still concentrate on improving specs and price not usability and experience.

I generally agree with you.

Computers would look a lot different today without Apple. Even those who are not from Apple are much more personal thanks to Apple.

It goes both ways, of course.

For instance, without Apple, I think that more personal computers would likely have supported preemptive multi-tasking sooner. In this case, Apple (and MS) showed that many people were willing to accept less.

 

[IJ Reilly]

You've said it took them about a year to recode QDOS for IBM hardware. How long would it take them to recode it again for some one else's hardware? By retaining the meaningless reservation to sell the OS we've just sold you to someone else (who's in competition with you), Microsofts earns twice and their success becomes independent from IBMs success. Sounds like a plan. The hardware compatibility only reduced the amount of software adaptation necessary. But Microsoft never planed to work with IBM as their only customer for this product.

That would depend on the hardware, I presume. Given that nobody other than IBM was even developing hardware to run a CP/M clone OS at that point, I don't think Gate gets credit for being visionary. You are speculating on the basis of no information, and refusing to even consider that Microsoft could have just gotten extremely lucky.