Second, graphical user interfaces were threatening Microsoft. As con-
sumers adopted the PC, they were increasingly frustrated with the com-
mand line interface and started to look at other PC products. The most
attractive of these other PC products was the Apple Macintosh, introduced
by Apple in 1984. The Macintosh offered a simple GUI interface that made
it easy to use a PC.

Gates admired the Mac. His company first wrote Word and Excel for the
Mac. And in 1985, Gates tried to license the Macintosh OS to port it to the
Intel chip architecture.[4-39] In what may have been the worst decision in
corporate computer history, Apple declined the offer. Gates therefore
turned his crew to the task of building Windows.

It is hard for us today to recall the significance of the threat that Gates felt
then. Microsoft was a tiny company compared with Apple. In 1984, Apple's
annual sales were $1.5 billion; Microsoft's were $98 million.[4-40] In hindsight,
the inevitable success of Windows seems assured, but at the time, many at
Microsoft certainly felt the threat of a world of competitors, some building
better OSs (DR-DOS) and some building better user interfaces or, more
precisely, GUIs, pronounced "gooeys" (Apple). Gates therefore pushed the
firm to develop something better of each.

By 1991, Gates realized that the future would be a world with one inte-
grated GUI-OS. Windows 95 would be that OS, but it would take some
time to get to Windows 95. Windows 95 would integrate the GUI of Win-
dows 3.0 with DOS, giving users a powerful and integrated system compa-
rable to that of the Apple Macintosh.

The key, however, was to make sure that while making the switch,
Microsoft didn't lose its customer base. Most were using MS-DOS; every-
one wanted Windows. So the key in the next four years, the company be-
lieved, was to hold the field.

This is where things got legal, and the account that follows is noth-
ing more than the allegations made by the antitrust enforcers (and others)
about how Microsoft responded to the threat it faced. But the allegations
are substantial, the parallel to later allegations is clear, and they will help
make the story of the _commons_ clear if we map this (alleged) story of con-
trol.

To hold the field, Microsoft had to assure that no competitor would suc-
ceed in stealing its operating system customer base. The threat of defection
was strong, given the increasingly strong competition of other DOSs. But
the tool to assure no great defection was the powerful and popular program
Windows 3.0. Everyone wanted Windows 3.0, and it was more important

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