Triumph of the Nerds: Reflection

It all began with the poor, eventually lost, soul that was Xerox in Palo Alto.  In 1973, Xerox released what would have been the first PC, if it had ever actually been available for sale.  Without this computer, both Microsoft and Apple would not be what they are today.  With the first use of a GUI, or Graphical Interface Unit, Xerox was completely ahead of it's time.  Enter Steve Jobs, a young entrepreneur who co-founded Apple in 1976.  During a visit to Xerox at which they revealed three new inventions to Jobs, he claims that he can only recall one, and this was the GUI.  Jobs says that he was so blinded by the genius of this idea that he could not have cared less about the two other items that Xerox showed.  He immediately knew that GUI was the future, but he also knew that Xerox's version of it was flawed and incomplete.  He went back to Apple and demanded that work on a GUI would begin.  "Xerox could've owned the computer industry," said Jobs, he merely got to their idea and enhanced it before they even had a chance.  While work on the GUI continued at Apple, IBM had bigger plans.  They were already releasing their first PC with a GUI in 1981 and were at the top of the computer world.  Apple needed to do it big, and their entire fate lay in the launch of the new Mac.  Upon its launch, the Mac did not do as well as expected, and IBM was still on top despite Mac's easier and more user friendly GUI.  The price of the Mac was just too high.  Mac soon realized they needed better software, and this is where Bill Gates, a true software wiz, came into play.  Jobs attempted to recruit Gates to Apple, but Gates forged ahead with his own company, Microsoft.  While Microsoft got down to business creating Windows, and IBM slowly fell of the map, hard times at Apple caused Steve Jobs to basically be forced out of the company he had helped create.  Scully, a man that Jobs himself had persuaded to join the Apple team, took over with his own vision for the company.  As more and more releases from Microsoft came out, Apple decided to sue them for clearly copying the ideas of Apple, unfortunately, Apple lost this battle.  The documentary ends off with Bill Gates releasing Windows 95, and being proud of his status as the richest man in the world.  It seemed as though Microsoft was on top of it all.  Little did they know that Apple had a lot more in store...