Microsoft has always been anti competitive, even when Windows was first produced. In 1973 Bill Gates was a student at Harvard who spent most of his time playing with computers and winning at high stakes poker. He never graduated, however. Instead, he and his friend Paul Allen developed a computer language, BASIC, for the Altair 8080, the world's first personal computer. Two years later, they formed a company called Microsoft. About this time, International Business Machines, or IBM, began making personal computers, and needed an OS. So, Microsoft bought DOS for $50,000, which became MS-DOS, and leased it to IMB. Because IBM already had an image as being dependable, their computers sold well, so Microsoft was very successful and made lots of money. Meanwhile, programmers from another successful startup company, Apple Computer, visited Xerox's research division, and saw there a new kind of OS. This new OS had icons, pull down menus, and a new piece of hardware called a mouse. They were impressed, and, because they had not been asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement, they began making a new OS with based on the prototype OS they'd seen for their new "Macintosh" computer. When Microsoft saw it, Bill knew he had to have an OS with a graphical interface in order to compete. So Microsoft began developing one of their own, called Windows, which would work in conjunction with MS-DOS, and introduced it a few months before Apple released the Macintosh. Windows was unlike anything anyone had ever seen before, and was very popular. Apple, however, was upset that Windows looked so much like their OS, and threatened to sue. Microsoft, in turn, threatened to stop development of Word and Excel for the Macintosh. Apple agreed to let Microsoft keep Windows, if they would update Microsoft Word, and delay releasing Excel for a few months. Apple's Macintosh was better, though, and sold more. But Microsoft kept releasing new versions of Windows, until version 2.3, in January of 1988, and they got it right, and Windows sells picked up. But this version of Windows was a lot more like the Macintosh's OS than earlier versions, and Apple sued. Eventually, however, the charges were dropped.