Today Steve Ballmer is richer than Gates

If one thing has become clear in Bill Gates’ 50-year professional career, it is that he has good nose for businessalthough sometimes he has failed in his decisions. This has led him to remain for almost four decades in the top 10 of the greatest fortunes. In his biographical book ‘Source code: My beginnings‘, the millionaire remembers what his biggest bet was: sign Steve Ballmer and offer you a good piece of the Microsoft pie. United through the halls of Harvard Bill Gates recalled in his book his years as a student at Harvard University in the fall of 1976, where the millionaire forged a close friendship with someone who, two decades He would later replace him at the helm of Microsoft. Gates met Ballmer through a mutual friend in a Harvard graduate economics class. “Steve looks a lot like you,” his friend told him. Unlike the rest of the mathematics students, Gates was impressed with the personality of his new friend. “Steve had incredible energy and a unique ability to motivate people,” Gates has written. I didn’t know it then, but that combination of skills made Ballmer the ideal candidate to help transform Microsoft from a small startup to a global corporation. In those years, Ballmer was already pointing out ways in the direction of sports. He was responsible for the university’s football team, oversaw advertising for its student newspaper, and was president of Harvard’s literary magazine. Gates describes in his book how he remembered attending a football game and seeing Ballmer “expend as much energy walking back and forth and jumping up and down the side of the field” as any of the players who were playing. Both companions they connected quickly and they became inseparable, chatting about the future, the power of business and how to revolutionize the world. Of course, among their big plans, they developed their particular strategy for success: skipping economics classes, and hurriedly studying at the last minute just before taking the exam…and passing it “triumphantly.” The millionaire says in his biography that the charismatic Ballmer was responsible for expanding Gates’ social circle during his time at Harvard, and introduces Bill Gates to the Fox Club. As the millionaire describes in his book, this club was known for its “black tie parties, secret handshakes, and other archaic rules and rituals,” which the Microsoft founder would have avoided if it weren’t for his effusive friend Ballmer. Steve, come to Microsoft In 1980, Bill Gates made a decision that would change the course of Microsoft and the technology industry. Gates needed a strategist, a partner who could handle the sales department to sell the product, while he focused on the technology. This is where Gates recalled Ballmer’s good social skills. In principle, the young founders of Microsoft were willing to offer up to 5% of the shares of their new company to recruit Steve Ballmer as a director. Finally, and thanks to Ballmer’s undeniable negotiating talent, Gates ended up agreeing to give him the 8.75% of Microsoft shares. Gates reflected on this decision years later: “Giving Steve those shares was one of the best decisions I ever made.” Microsoft’s success in the decades that followed demonstrated the wisdom of this choice, cementing the company’s position as a leader in the technology industry. The founder of Microsoft recognized the importance of having someone like Ballmer, who had a business vision complementary to his. “We needed someone who could help us grow as a business,” Gates explained in his memoirs. This decision demonstrated Gates’ long-term vision and willingness to sacrifice immediate gains for greater future benefit. The incorporation of Ballmer had a profound effect on the trajectory of Microsoft, beyond showing signs of the energy that conquered Gates. sweating his shirt on stageor doing for Gates to lose his shame in order to increase your sales. Ballmer’s years of leadership at the head of Microsoft cannot be considered the most brilliant of the company, which did not know how to rise to the top. mobile phone train. Ballmer returned to his passion After leave the world of technology and with 8.75% of the shares of a Microsoft catapulted to the financial success thanks to Satya NadellaSteve Ballmer has been able to dedicate himself body and soul to his passion: basketball. Bought the equipment of the NBA Los Angeles Clippers and that has led him to become the eleventh largest fortune in the world according to the Forbes millionaires list. Steve Ballmer has a net worth of 121.3 billion dollars, surpassing in wealth to his friend and mentor Bill Gates. In Xataka | Bill Gates earned $5.545 billion sleeping. This is what it means to have a fortune of 130,000 million Image | Flickr (Wired Photostream, World Bank Photo Collection)

Steve Jobs’ widow is squandering the fortune she inherited. You have good reasons to do so.

Laurene Powell Jobs was already a brilliant business woman with a promising future before she met, almost by chance, the person who would be her life partner for the next 22 years. As chance would have it, one day he arrived late to a conference in 1989 and sat next to the main speaker: Steve Jobs. What happened from that moment on is part of the history of technology. After the death of jobsLaurene inherited much of the Apple founder’s fortune, which she only had to share with Steve’s first daughter, Lisa Brennan-Jobs. Lisa, in addition to giving the name to the failed Apple projectwas the result of Jobs’ relationship at age 23. Most of Laurene’s inheritance was Jobs’ shareholding in Apple and Disney. In 2011, these shares were valued at around 10 billion dollarsbut Jobs’ widow was very clear about what she was going to do with that money: “I am not interested in building on the legacy of an inheritance and my children know it. Steve was not interested in that. If I live long enough, that inheritance will end with me.” The latest movements of Laurene Powell Jobs indicate that Jobs’ widow will keep her word and spend the entire fortune she inherited as Steve would have liked: dedicating herself to philanthropy until her death. Goal: donate $3.5 billion over the next 10 years Just like MacKenzie Scottex-wife of Jeff Bezos, Laurene Powell Jobs did not want to join her multimillion-dollar charity project to the The Giving Pledge Philanthropic Clubled by Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. He has preferred to go it alone and spend his entire fortune on his own philanthropic projects that improve people’s lives and reduce the impact of climate change. Graduated in political science and with a master’s degree in business from Stanford, the millionaire widow She is not a novice managing funds.. In addition to creating his own healthy eating company, Powell Jobs has been able to make impact investments which have allowed it to support social and environmental projects without its fortune being significantly reduced. The value of Disney and Apple shares has increased tenfold in the last decade, however, Laurene’s current fortune is estimated at around $14 billion. That gives an idea of ​​the volume of donations he has made in recent years. Since the death of Steve Jobs, Laurene has created two charitable foundations on which she concentrates all her philanthropic efforts. The first is Emerson Collective which focuses on educational projects that seek to offer equal educational opportunities for groups at risk of exclusion. The second pillar of your charitable project is Waverley Street Foundationan international initiative aimed at protecting the groups most vulnerable to climate change, supporting education, health and preservation projects of natural spaces so that people can survive in the communities where they were born. Jobs’ widow’s project is invest 3.5 billion dollars in the next 10 years in this latest project. “I inherited my wealth from my husband, who didn’t mind accumulating it. I do this in honor of his work and have dedicated my life to doing everything I can to distribute it effectively, helping people and communities sustainably.” This investment objective is far from 10 billion dollars that Jeff Bezos proposed to investthe $45 billion from Mark Zuckerbergthe most 160 billion from Warren Buffet or the 90% of Bill Gates’ fortune. Laurene’s philanthropic spirit and discretion does not prevent the widow from enjoying her fortune visiting Mallorca on the Venusa family yacht designed in 2009 by Jobs himself, valued at 120 million dollars. Jobs’ fortune does not concern the couple’s three children either, since all of them already have established careers outside the media spotlight. Reed Paul relegated his father’s last name to the background to pursue a degree in oncology at Stanford University. Erin Siena is an architect and designer. Eve Jobs has a degree in Science, Technology and Society from Stanford, although she currently makes her living as model on the main catwalks. In Xataka | “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it”: Steve Jobs’ technique that used emotional intelligence when no one was talking about it In Xataka | It’s not Steve Jobs, it’s Mustafa Suleyman: Microsoft’s AI CEO who joins the trend of dressing “Jobs style” Image | Flickr (TechCrunch)

Steve Jobs preferred to recover them and bury them in a landfill

In 1983, Apple launched Lisa, a revolutionary computer for its graphical interface and its innovative use of the mouse, both features ahead of their time. However, several factors worked against it and made it a commercial failure: its exorbitant price of 10,000 dollars (equivalent to about 30,000 euros today), its hardware failures and the tough competition with IBM… and with Apple’s own Macintosh model, much more affordable. So only 30,000 units were sold before Apple canceled production in 1985, leaving the company with a surplus of 7,000 copies stored without a clear destination. The visionary reseller who didn’t see Apple coming That’s where Bob Cook, founder of Sun Remarketing, a company specialized in reselling technology products, especially those from Apple, comes into the picture. After having achieved success reselling the Apple III, Cook decided to bet even bigger and acquired the remaining 7,000 Lisa at a bargain price with the intention of updating and relaunching them to the market as ‘Lisa Professional’. Thus, Cook and his team invested $200,000 in improvements to solve the Lisa’s problems. The floppy drive, RAM and hard drive were optimized, in addition to installing a more modern version of the Macintosh operating system. Everything was ready for a relaunch that promised to give new life to a computer condemned to oblivion. Today, the Apple Lisa is considered a collector’s item and a milestone in the history of personal computing. A drastic decision However, what seemed like a great deal turned into a nightmare for Cook. Apple had a clause in the sales contract which allowed him to recover the computers at any time, and he decided to activate it in 1989, just before the renewed ‘Lisa Professional’ hit the market. Cook couldn’t do anything to prevent it: preferred not to legally confront the powerful Cupertino company and saw his investment disappear in a few days. It is speculated that the company did not want these computers to compete with its new products, in addition to the fact that the image of a failed model recycled by third parties did not fit with its strict brand control policy. Apple did not limit itself only to recovering the Lisa, but also took an even more radical decision: he destroyed them and buried them at a landfill in Logan, Utah: the company even benefited financially from the destruction of the computers thanks to tax deductions for inventory depreciation. A technological burial that has gone down in history The case is reminiscent of the famous burial of cartridges of the Atari’s ‘ET the Extra-Terrestrial’ video gameanother famous failure of the technology industry. But, unlike this one, Apple’s decision generated criticism for the waste of technology which, with a better approach, could have been recycled instead of buried (and we complain today about the planned obsolescence…). On the other hand, there are still doubts about the exact number of computers that were destroyed: while some sources speak of 7,000 units, others leave open the possibility that some updated Lisas “escaped” the fate that the company had prepared for them. Image | Photomontage by Marcos Merino In Xataka | You can now emulate an old Mac from the 80s in your browser In Xataka | This impressive collection of classic computers is made of paper – and there are templates for you to assemble them too This article was originally published in Genbeta in February 2025 and is part of Genbeta’s “greatest hits” that we will discover here in the coming weeks.

Someone has paid 2.4 million for a check for 500. It bears the signatures of Steve Jobs and Wozniak

Turning $500 into $2.4 million could be anyone’s wet dream cryptobro, but the story at hand It has nothing to do with investment. The protagonist is a small piece of paper, and not just any one, but one that was key in the creation of one of the most important technology companies of our era: Apple. lto auction. It occurred a few days ago via RR Auction. The object auctioned was the $500 check that Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak signed in March 1976 and its final price was $2,409,886, 4,800 times its original value. The check is encapsulated in a plastic casing and its authenticity and quality is certified with a “MINT 9” note, which indicates that it is in a perfect state of conservation. The first check. Throughout their time together, the Apple founders signed many checks, but this one is special because it is the first of all. Furthermore, getting the money was not easy. At that time neither of the two steves He was rich, so Jobs had to sell his van and Wozniak his HP 65 calculator. At the time of his signature, there were still 16 days left before the official birth of the company, so we can affirm that he was a key player in the birth of Apple. The assignment. We already know who the senders were, but who was the receiver? The check is made out to Howard Cantin, who at the time was designing printed circuit boards at Atari. The commission for which he received this amount was to create the plaque that would carry the Apple Ithe company’s first computer that went on sale a few months later. When it was time to get paid, Steve Jobs offered Cantin shares in Apple, but Cantin preferred money. Little did he know that the company would be worth $4 billion. It was not the only thing that was auctioned. The check was the star object of the Apple 50th anniversary auctionbut there were many others such as the opening document for Apple’s first bank account, which sold for $828,569. The Apple poster that Jobs had hanging in his living room was also sold for $659,900 and the most expensive: the prototype of the Apple I board, which reached $2,750,000. In total, the auction has raised more than $8 million. In Xataka | Einstein’s first violin had passed unnoticed. Until an auction house put it up for sale. Image | Wikipedia

Ode to rounded corners, the visual element that has proven Steve Jobs right once again

Let’s pay a small tribute to a visual element that we almost never pay attention to, but that is already an integral part of our lives. Let’s talk about rounded corners. They are everywhere and have taken over technology. We love them. We are full of devices and interfaces dominated by rectangles and squares with rounded corners. They are more elegant, softer to look at, much less aggressive and strident. But there is a true psychology behind that way of designing objects and interfaces. For example: since we were little we always knew that sharp corners were dangerous – today corner protectors for children are a big deal. These elements facilitate visual perception, and their introduction into the technological world deserves to be remembered. Steve Jobs was right (again) Andy Hertzfeld was one of the team members who developed the Apple Macintosh. In May 1981 he shared a curious story, now recovered by the Computer History Museum. Lisa OS 1.0. Look at the edges of the calculator app. They are rounded! The protagonist of that story is Bill Atkinson, legendary Apple engineer and Hertzfeld’s partner on that project. At that time Atkinson was working on the development of his QuickDraw application – then called LisaGraf – and although he usually worked from home, if he made any significant progress he would quickly go to the office to show off the improvement. That’s what happened that spring. Atkinson approached Apple’s offices in mythical “Texaco Towers” Cupertino campus and showed how he had added code to be able to draw circles and ovals very easily. Programming that was much more complicated than it seems because square roots were usually involved to achieve it and the Motorola 68000 of the Lisa and the Macintosh did not support floating point operations. Atkinson managed to solve it with calculations that only used addition and subtraction—he was probably inspired by the Bresenham algorithm—and began to fill the screen with circles and ovals while his companions probably smiled in astonishment and satisfaction. But there was someone who was neither too amazed nor too pleased. That someone was Steve Jobs. Upon seeing the demonstration, Jobs said —Okay, circles and ovals are fine, but How about drawing rectangles with rounded corners? Can we do that too? —No, there is no way to do it. “It would actually be really difficult to do, and I don’t really think we need it,” Atkinson replied, probably annoyed that Jobs hadn’t been too impressed with his method for creating circles and ovals. —Rectangles with corners are everywhere! Look around this room! Hello, Mac OS X with rounded corners (2001). Sure enough, the room had objects like whiteboards and tables with rounded corners, and Jobs insisted that they were everywhere and that he only had to look out the window to notice. He ended up convincing Atkinson to take him around the block and point out all the rectangles with rounded corners they saw. After seeing a no parking sign that was rectangular with rounded edges, he said: —Okay, I give up. I’ll see if it’s as difficult as I thought. And he went home to work on the problem. The next afternoon he returned to the office with a huge smile: his new demo I didn’t just draw rectangles with rounded cornersbut it did it almost as fast as it did drawing rectangles with corners. He added that code and called that primitive “RoundRects”. In our pockets we usually carry a device that makes good use of these rectangles with rounded corners. The iPhone, of course, does it. That design element soon became an integral and indispensable part of the Macintosh operating system interface. And it also ended up being part of the hardware (hello, mobile phones with rounded corners) and software design at both Apple and many other technology companies. Source: Freepik. The Cupertino firm also fully integrated it into its iPhones starting in 2013, when iOS 7 and its “squircle” arrivedan even more subtle type of rectangle with rounded corners that he ended up using, for example, in his icons. It was one more example of the particular relevance of a design element that has ended up completely taking over our screens and the technological world. Long live the rounded corners. In Xataka | Many young people already see and hear everything at 1.5x. They didn’t get there by chance: there was a lot of money at stake

What Steve Jobs thought about intelligence

A good way to help us work our path to success is to find inspiring figures. People from different areas that reached significant goals and who had often overcome multiple adversities. Fortunately, we live in a connected world where many speeches or experiences of those who can be our referents are at hand. The speech. We must not necessarily match everything. Sometimes it is enough to find certain anecdotes or advice that can be adequate for certain moments of our life. It is no secret that Steve Jobs has inspired thousands of people, and continues to do so. A speech provided In 1982 by Apple’s co -founder at the Academy of Achievement It has a part that has not gone unnoticed. Much is talk about intelligence. Some believe that this capacity is key to achieving great achievements in life, and that it is directly related to intellectual coefficient (CI). Others believe intelligence It has nothing to do with the ICeven some claim that it is a secondary capacity to achieve achievements, and that it is of no use if there are no defined goals, action plans and, above all, discipline. But what did Jobs think? As Ign points outthe businessman had a fairly peculiar vision of what it was to be intelligent. For him, he was mainly on people’s ability not to see things individually, but to understand them as a whole. To do this, it was essential to take distance and contemplate a problem or a situation as if they were looking from the top of a building. Let’s see exactly what Jobs said: “I have reflected a little about this, and one of the things that I think is important is that it has a lot to do with memory, but also with the ability to get away a little, as if you were in a city and you could see everything from the 80th floor, looking down. While others try to discover how to go from point A to point B reading those absurd maps, you can see everything in front of you.” This successful businessman continues to explain that power away allows us to see everything as a whole, and make connections that, from that perspective, seem obvious. “Therefore, brilliant people often feel guilty, because they come up with things that simply say” look this “, and other people give them silly awards and feel weird,” he said, precisely in the academy that recognizes the achievements. Other ideas. For Bill Gates, another personality of the technological world, success was to consider the worst and best scenario. Microsoft co -founder left in the background qualities such as reading or exercising memory, although We know that it has a huge library and that he dedicates much of his time to read. For Warren Buffettthe key to achieving success is high as time as time. Images | Apple In Xataka | Sam Altman’s advice to achieve success in a competitive world: build a solid network and be constant *An earlier version of this article was published in August 2024

Steve Jobs changed his Mercedes-Benz SL55 AMG of $ 120,000 every six months. And everything was due to registration

When Steve Jobs was Apple’s CEO he used to drive from Your home in Palo Alto until The company’s headquarters in Cupertino. It was a trip of about 20 minutes that made several times a week with his Mercedes-Benz SL55 AMG. This car, of approximately $ 120,000It was a whim that many technological entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley could afford without blinking. Jobs’s car, however, was special for a reason. Only. Unlike any other SL55 AMG that could be found out there, the one who handled the co -founder of the apple signature had no registration. If walking on the 1 infinite loop campus you met a silver mercedes in one of its parking spaces, that was your vehicle. Now, for a long time it was not clear how Jobs managed to move in a car that apparently contradicted California’s laws. Leasing. How our Applesfera colleagues collectApple’s leader was not doing anything illegal, but had found a way to use a car without registration over time. To get it, it simply changed Mercedes every six months. This was due to the fact that local regulations allowed new cars without identification for about 180 days. The idea was perfect, right? But there are many other interesting details. Do not buy. While Jobs had a lot of money, fortune that these days is using its widow Laurene Powell JobsI didn’t buy a new car every time I needed it. The technological environment Itwire had the opportunity To interview more than a decade ago to Jon Callas, who was CTO of Entrust and had worked on several positions in Apple. Callas said that Jobs had a leasing agreement that allowed him to renew his car for an identical one every year. Obsession. So why did all this the co -founder of Apple? Apparently, to preserve your privacy. Registing can reveal personal information about the vehicle’s owner, so Jobs wanted to avoid this. An interesting note is that, at least between 2006 and 2010, the businessman committed very few infractions. Wired counts that in that period of time he received two citations, both for speeding in Santa Clara. A peculiar guy. Jobs was a very particular visionary. In some aspects of his life he was very rudimentary. For example, he lived practically without furniture at home because none convinced him, Although he had a “secret room” in Pixar to develop his ideas. In certain areas I did not doubt that when He ordered a yach of 120 million dollars whose lines and minimalism remember an Apple product. Images | Mercedes-Benz Ag | Apple | Joe Ravi In Xataka | It is not Steve Jobs, it is Mustafa Suleyman: Microsoft’s CEO that points to the tendency to dress “Jobs style” *An earlier version of this article was published in August 2024

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates seemed irreconcilable enemies. They were actually great allies: “We worked well together”

In the field of technology, times of A fierce rivalry between large companies to master a certain market: Intel and AMD, Sony and Nintendo, Nvidia and AMD or, of course, Apple and Microsoftwith Steve Jobs and Bill Gates as representatives of that rivalry. However, beyond that business competitiveness to achieve The best products of the market with PC or Mac: Bill Gates and Steve Jobs cultivated a relationship of “intimate enemies” based on mutual respect and recognition. Complementary adversaries Microsoft and Apple’s story has been marked by rivalrybut on many occasions, both companies have collaborated hand in hand to develop products. However, despite those collaborations that, for example, took Office to the Macintosh, has maintained the image of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates as eternal irreconcilable rivals. Nothing is further from reality. In An interview For the podcast ON PURPOUS From Jay Shetty, Bill Gates confessed that Jobs and he were complementary, and that allowed them to work together on different projects. “I had a fantastic relationship with Steve. At first I worked with Jobs and Wozniak with Basic for Apple 2, and later, as Steve had a small group inside Apple developing the Macintoshinvited Microsoft to make some software applications for him. We work very closely in that project. We loved both of the result and ended up being a key product for Apple, “Gates explained. The founder of Microsoft stressed that “although we were very competitive, we also admired each other.” Apparently, Steve Jobs thought the same as Bill Gates. In one historical interview in which journalists of The Wall Street Journal Kara Swisher and Walt Mossberg sat on both on the stage of conference D5, Steve Jobs claimed citing the song Two of the Beatles: “‘You and I have longer memories than the path that extends ahead’ and that is clearly true in this case.” Gates assured that the secret of the long relationship of love/hate between Apple’s co -founder and he was that both were complementary. “We worked well together. He was very good in what I was not,” said the millionaire. Without Apple and Microsoft the computer science would be different The visions of how a Microsoft and Apple computer should be They were very differentand a faithful reflection of the strengths of their two leaders. While Apple put all the focus on design and efficiency, in Microsoft they focused on developing a platform for their software with the aim of taking a computer to each house. “They said we were out of reality, but we knew that computer science would be part of everyday life,” Gates recalled in his interview. “Steve had incredible skills. He appreciated the user design and interface and even for his intuition with people. It was simply a genius in a way that I cannot explain. I did not look at the code or write it. Instead, the programming is mine. Let’s make that faster and more efficient code.” This rivalry and concept differences caused computer science to advance to the mature industry that is currently, with two companies reaching capitalizations that range The 3 billion dollars. This success would probably have been impossible Without the incentive of the competition which was lived in the late 90s and early 2000s. Microsoft’s co -founder millionaire recognized that both had speeches about how computers would change education and improve it, although he also acknowledged that projects to improve the use of computers They were not always successful. “I think we were both satisfied with what we had done. We got a seat in the front row and helped build all this,” Gates said in reference to the last conversations he had with Steve Jobs before his death in 2011. In the joint intervention that both founders made in 2007, Steve Jobs defined how he saw the competition between Apple and Microsoft of the late 90s: “Many people believed that the rivalry between Apple and Microsoft was a zero -sum game in which for Apple Microsoft won had to lose. It was clear that it was not necessary to play that game because Apple was not going to beat Microsoft. Microsoft. In Xataka | Elon Musk got outstanding in computer science. Who designed the computers they used did not approve with the same ease Image | Flickr (Joi Ito, Kazuhiro Shiozawa)

Steve Jobs discovered that meetings were a huge problem. Larry Page confirmed that solving it was not easy

He excess meetings At work it has been a obstacle to productivity For decades. Although today it is A very debated topicalready in 1986 Steve Jobs He identified him as one of the great enemies of efficiency in technology companies. Decades later, Larry Page, co -founder of Google, also faced this problem by assuming CEO in Eric Schmidt replacement. At that time he realized the challenge of solving that problem without causing others Even worse. Jobs and Page attempts to change the meetings culture They showed that, although the solutions seem simple, putting them into practice is much more complicated than it seems. Steve Jobs and the problem of meetings In 1986, Steve Jobs realized that frequent and unproductive meetings were negatively affecting the creativity and efficiency of the equipment, as recognized in the letters collected in the book ‘Make submission Wonderful‘. Jobs noted that, instead of helping to advance, many of the meetings in Next They became a waste of timebraking innovation and quick decision making. Jobs promoted the idea of ​​minimizing meetings (and even prohibit them on Thursdays) and only call them when they were really necessary. According to Jobs, The key I was to keep small and focused teams, avoiding large groups where most attendees did not contribute anything relevant. This philosophy later helped Apple maintain its agility and response capacity, in addition to inspiring the CEO of another great technological: Google. Larry Page and the challenge of changing Google In 2011, Larry Page took the command of Google as CEO, at a time when the company already had 30,000 employees and increasingly ambitious challenges. Such and As I counted Jacob Votko, former employee of Google who lived in the first person those changes, Page realized that the excess meetings was affecting the company’s capacity To innovate quickly. The former employee had an anecdote in the Larry Page had criticized large companies as Yahoo! Because it took weeks to update their main page, while in Google they did it in hours. However, now that Google had grown up, Page wondered if in a startup someone would be making jokes about the slow decision of Google. To combat this problem, Larry Page He sent an email To the entire company with new Rules for meetings: Every meeting must have a “decision maker.” You can discuss issues, but once determined, each one executes them as if the decision were their own. Each meeting must have a clear purpose, structure and agenda. If you have nothing to contribute, don’t go All must be punctual, and pay full attention to the meeting (not other background tasks) Celebrate meetings in groups of less than 10 people and broadly spread the notes Establish a maximum duration of 50 minutes instead of an hour and respect those time limits The difficulties of applying new rules Although Page’s instructions were clear, Votko said that the implementation of these measures was not simple. Many employees continued to extend meetings until they were impossible for them to continue because others needed the room. In fact, some teams even tried to take advantage of the 10 -minute holes between meetings to carry out rapid meetings in which they did not even sat, generating friction with users who extended their meetings beyond the regulatory 50 minutes. According to published Business InsiderLarry Page established that no decision should wait for a meeting, and if it required a meeting, it should be summoned urgently. That generated some confusion and organizational chaos since it was interpreted as that these meetings had preference over others, demonstrating that changing such entrenched habits requires much more than simple rules. To reinforce these changes, Larry Page divided Google into seven large groups of product, each with a clear person responsible. The goal was that each of them will act like a startup internal In this way, decision -making would be expedited and unnecessary bureaucracy and unnecessary meetings would be avoided. More than a decade later, great technological ones try again apply the same recipes To prevent someone, in some startup, not get rid of his slowness When making decisions. In Xataka | Working in Google was a dream for many. Paradise in the technology offices is now fading Image | AppleFlickr (Niall Kennedy), Unspash (Rodeo Project Management Software)

Steve Jobs presented an emulator in 1999 to turn any Mac into a playstation. Sony did not even grace

January 1999. MacWorld Expo de San Francisco With Steve Jobs on stage. After a presentation loaded with video games and focused on how well those video games run in front of the PC versions, Jobs made Una of the most controversial presentations that have been seen in a scenario of a company of Apple’s reach: that of a PlayStation emulator. Steve’s goal was for each MAC to become a PlayStation I could run games like ‘Crash Bandicoot‘, something possible by the hand of a company called Connectix and of a software called Virtual Game Station. In an ecstatic Sony for the success of their console, they should not give credit to what was being affirmed in one of the most projection events worldwide. The punishment for the creators of the emulator? Be bought … by Sony. Turn each mac into a playstation In 1998, the field of video games for Mac was … Campo. In PC you could enjoy the Lucasarts great adventuresof ‘Warcraft‘, from’ Devil ‘, De’Age of Empires II‘And that same 1998 jewelry was born’Starcraft‘ either ‘Half life‘, But the situation in Mac was very different. There were some projects, yes, and companies like Bungie had interesting games such as ‘Marathon’, but the PC win was incontestable in the entertainment segment. A young programmer named Aaron Giles came up with one thing. Hey, if the MAC has a CD reader and the USA PlayStation CD, Why couldn’t a PlayStation game into a Mac? Giles worked for Connectix, a company founded in 1988 with a very curious story. They developed pioneer software for Mac, but with each new version of Mac OS, Apple ‘stole’ those functions that they had developed to include their own. What Apple did was buy Shareware versions of the same concept that Connectix developed, and so they did not have to make deals with the Connectix itself. Not only did they do hardware: they also took the mac from the sleeve Quickcamone of the First webcam in historythat They sold to Logitech in 1998. But the emulation was the strong point of this company and the focus of many of the developers of the same. Let’s go back to the history of Giles. The programmer began working on the project in 1998 and the truth is that, being able to read Sony’s games with a standard CD-ROM reader, the hardware part was solved. “Only” You had to focus on emulating the bios And the PlayStation environment, but by January 1999 I already had it ready. Thus, on stage, Jobs announced to the world the Game Station virtual emulator, or VGS. “Our goal is to have the best game platform in the world,” said Jobs, who showed below a photo of a playstation. “This is another video game console, the most popular at this time. Wouldn’t it be great if we could also play some of your games?” With that lapidary phrase, Jobs presented the Connectix product adding that it was an emulation software that would sell for $ 49 and that “turn your Mac into a Sony PlayStation.” Less than half of what cost a PlayStation. I imagine Sony’s executives spitting the sake when they learned that Jobs had said that. Hallucinatory “There are hundreds of games that can reproduce from the PlayStation,” said Jobs, who gave way to a Phil Schiller – world marketing director of Apple products – that did not reduce the enthusiasm or tone. Steve giving way to Phil before playing ‘Crash Bandicoot 3’ “This is very cool,” Phil began. The possibility of using a Mac, my MAC, to execute all the great playstation games quickly and economically only putting the game is a fantastic idea ” AND, Neither short nor lazy, he began to play ‘Crash Bandicoot 3’. “It is Sony’s most popular game at this time,” said Phil without cutting off a little (something that today is absolutely unthinkable) and … he began to play. That title had come out just a few months before and ran at 100% speed in a Mac (after a couple of pulls) simply by putting the CD and running VGS. The question was how. How they had been able to emulate perfectly in a IMAC G3 At 233 MHz an RISC processor at 33 MHX, being this of a completely different architecture. And the most impressive is not that, but Giles got it without using a Sony code line. Before continuing I will summarize How an emulator works. It is something that recreates the hardware and system of a console on another platform. In this case, a program that recreates a PlayStation in a MAC. The emulator makes “translator” In real time among the game instructions, which are designed for consoles hardware, to the instructions of the host device. It is something that consumes many resources because you must do a double job, but the really complicated thing is to emulate the BIOS. BIOS means Basic Input Output Sustm and is the essential software of the console that controls the start and interaction between the hardware and that console. For VGS to work, he had to emulate that bios. Giles contacted Sony to help them with the BIOS of PlayStation and, before the Japanese refusal (and an cessation and withdrawal letter by Sony), the programmer did something as absurd as great: thoroughly investigate the machine, study the original bios and rewrite it from scratchlike an own bios. It was absurd because it was a titanic task, but also great because Sony couldn’t do … nothing. Sony’s disbelief That same 1999, Connectix launched VGS for Mac and most games ran fantastically on Apple computers. There were characteristics, such as the vibration of the PlayStation command, which did not work, but it was something that impacted allowing, for 49 dollars, all the owners of a Mac have, in practice, a playstation. For sale of games it would not go wrong because a window of potential users opened, but as we said before, Sony should … Read more

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