Three computer science students from Berkeley hacking code late at night will create a Java word processing program. Let’s call it “NetWord.” … Suddenly, the OS that controls the CPU on your desktop is a legacy of an old paradigm … This means that Microsoft is now a severely overpriced personal productivity tools applications vendor.
Predictor: McNealy, Scott
Prediction, in context:John Murphey wrote the following in his online column Tech Track, a compilation of technology-related items regularly summarized from magazine and newspaper articles. It is a direct quotation of Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy’s Oct. 9, 1995, response in Forbes ASAP to an earlier Forbes ASAP column written by George Gilder that claimed, among other things, that Marc Andreessen will be bigger than Bill Gates in the Internet World:”Here’s how we see [Java] playing out. Three computer science students from Berkeley hacking code late at night will create a Java word processing program. Let’s call it ‘NetWord.’ They put it on their Web server at http://www.netword.com. It will be free because these kids want fame first, knowing that it will lead to fortune as with their hero, Marc Andreessen … So you’re shopping for a new word-processing program. You’ve seen the ads offering [Microsoft] Word on sale for $249. Your buddy sends an e-mail and says check out NetWord. You take a test drive. It works! Cool! You are not alone. A few million others have heard about NetWord. Now the makers have a following and in a few months they start a company and offer NetWord 2.0 for a mere $2 per copy … Suddenly, the OS that controls the CPU on your desktop is a legacy of an old paradigm … This means that Microsoft is now a severely overpriced personal productivity tools applications vendor with an OS business that is no longer able to ‘captivate’ the end-user by being the only platform to run desired applications.”
Biography:Scott McNealy was the CEO and cofounder of Sun Microsystems, Inc., a leading global supplier of network computing solutions, including Java, in the 1990s. (Entrepreneur/Business Leader.)
Date of prediction: January 1, 1995
Topic of prediction: Information Infrastructure
Subtopic: Language/Interface/Software
Name of publication: Monroe Street Journal
Title, headline, chapter name: Tech Track
Quote Type: Direct quote
Page number or URL of document at time of study:
http://www.umich.edu/~msjrnl/backmsj/111395/techtrack.html
This data was logged into the Elon/Pew Predictions Database by: Allen, Patrick J.