

Bill Gates: Control-Alt-Delete a mistake - anigbrowl
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/09/26/tech/innovation/bill-gates-control-alt-delete/

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mixmastamyk
This is a well-known story by now, but it feels like this article buries the
punchline a bit. However, I did find this other part interesting:

 _When co-founder Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1996, "he sort of says, 'I
want this, this and this and I'll give you this, this and this.' ... We did
the deal in three days," Gates said.

That included buying a 6% share of Apple, which lawyers convinced Gates that
Microsoft shouldn't keep for antitrust reasons.

"It would have been nice if we had," he said._

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orionblastar
Hmmm, the Vulcan nerve pinch, the three finger salute, the Hail Mary keyboard
combo, the three panic buttons.

Ctrl-Alt-Del was a mistake because of buggy and sloppy code that caused the OS
to crash. The person writing DOS had added it, I was told, because there was
no reset button on the IBM PC 5150 system. IBM refused to install one, (later
on PC Cloners added a Reset button along with a Turbo button to change the CPU
clock speed) and so the programmer found three keys that most likely would not
be accidentally pressed together by mistake and had to be pressed on purpose
for the reset code to use. Control and Alt were next to each other, but Delete
was way over on the other side of the keyboard.

IIRC the Apple II had this issue and had used the Open Apple and Closed Apple
with a "Reset" button, and because people would accidentally press the "Reset"
button they had a change so that you had to hold down the Apple keys with the
Reset key to reset the Apple II series.

Later on Commodore made the Amiga and had the Amiga logo keys for resetting
the Amiga series in AmigaDOS/AmigaOS.

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colanderman
_you had to hold down the Apple keys with the Reset key to reset the Apple II
series_

Not quite – control-open Apple-reset did a reboot; control-closed Apple-reset
did a psychedelic system test.

