Top all-time · #7578
Marcel Brown
Personal blog · thisdayintechhistory.comhistoryhardware
Marcel Brown writes This Day in Tech History, a personal blog at thisdayintechhistory.com about history and hardware. Since 2015, 10 different Hacker News readers have linked it 10 times. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-10-28, and you can follow it by feed.
Too few sampled comments (9) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN commenters cite this site's short posts on tech history, mostly about Microsoft, Apple, IBM and AOL, as sources for historical claims in threads about those companies.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 9 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Technology History posted every day of the year. The History of Technology as researched by Marcel Brown, The Most Trusted Name in Technology.
Most-linked posts?
- /05/26/bill-gates-internet-tidal-wave/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2021-02-15
- /12/06/apple-sues-over-quicktime/2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2023-10-02
What Hacker News says?
According to [0] it was a contractor working for both Apple and Microsoft. Not an ex-Apple employee but still an interesting read, if true. [0] https://thisdayintechhistory.com/12/06/apple-sues-over-quick...
Comment linking /12/06/apple-sues-over-quicktime/
on “Nvidia buys $5B in Intel”Submitted First Message on the Internet as a story · 29 points
HN discussionRemember that time Microsoft bankrolled a floundering Apple to able to "But look, Windows is not a monopoly" https://thisdayintechhistory.com/08/06/apple-and-microsoft-c...
Comment linking /08/06/apple-and-microsoft-call-truce/
on “I tried Servo”Yeah, that's irony. There's more. A former monopolist getting flak from a current monopolist who tricked IBM with MS-DOS [1]. If you want to be pedantic on the history of Microsoft, however, I'd like to remind you of the history of IBM [2]. Of particular relevance are the parts "IBM in Germany and Nazi Occupied Europe" and "1969: Antitrust, the Unbundling of software and services". Do we still (respectively ~75 and…
Comment linking /11/06/ibm-signs-a-deal-with-the-devil/
on “Microsoft Becomes Sponsor of Open Source Initiative”No need to guess, from https://thisdayintechhistory.com/05/26/bill-gates-internet-t... to all the material discovered during US v. Microsoft, we know MS's plan was exactly what you said, after killing Netscape to avoid it becoming the new cross-OS runtime for apps. Good point about MS leaving the Web fallow, which missed big opportunities Google and Apple (iPhone original app model was Web-only; native came almost a…
Comment linking /05/26/bill-gates-internet-tidal-wave/
on “Brendan Eich on the Lex Fridman Podcast [video]”Based on the top links from a quick search, it seems IBM was fully aware that they were sub-licensing the OS through Microsoft: https://www.pcmag.com/news/the-rise-of-dos-how-microsoft-got... https://thisdayintechhistory.com/11/06/ibm-signs-a-deal-with... From the second link: However, Microsoft knew that a small company named Seattle Computer Products had developed an operating system similar to CP/M called QDOS, f…
Comment linking /11/06/ibm-signs-a-deal-with-the-devil/
on “LibreOffice slams Microsoft for locking in Office users w/ complex file formats”There was another lawsuit in addition to the GUI "Look and feel" one. Apple contracted a company to port QuickTime to Windows. Intel/Microsoft then contracted the same company to optimize Video for Windows, and they reused QuickTime code which then shipped with Windows. http://thisdayintechhistory.com/12/06/apple-sues-over-quickt...
Comment linking /12/06/apple-sues-over-quicktime/
on “Apple and NeXT announce merger (1996)”I know what we would have had if not for the form element: MSN [0] > Originally named The Microsoft Network, it debuted as a proprietary online service on August 24, 1995, to coincide with the release of Windows 95. MSN was a direct competitor to the internet (and AOL) despite Microsoft’s famous pivot a couple of months earlier [1] > Realizing his company had missed the boat in estimating the impact and popularity o…
Comment linking /05/26/bill-gates-internet-tidal-wave/
on “The ‘Form’ Element Created the Modern Web. Was It a Big Mistake?”No, Microsoft actually stole QuickTime code. https://thisdayintechhistory.com/12/06/apple-sues-over-quick... Someone doesn’t know their history… Also, the look and feel lawsuit happened before Jobs came back and within a few months after he came back, he settled all of the claims. Your memory is spotty
Comment linking /12/06/apple-sues-over-quicktime/
on “Could EU force hardware manufacturers to make working drivers for Linux?”And this is almost three years before the huge traffic jam that occurred when they went from pay-per-hour to unlimited: http://thisdayintechhistory.com/12/01/aol-goes-unlimited/
Comment linking /12/01/aol-goes-unlimited/
on “An Apology from America OffLine (1994)”
