July 29, 1985

Mr. John Sculley
President
Apple Computer
20525 Mariani Ave.
Mail Stop 231
Cupertino, CA 95014

Dear John,

I remain enthusiastic about the benefits of licensing Mac technology. Currently I think the following companies are the best choices:

Northern Telecom -- a separate letter copied to NT describes my thinking here. This is a first class company.

Motorola -- their Four-Phase subsidiary is committed to the 68000. They aren't doing well. Their direct sales force is good but not so large that it will threaten the retail channel. Motorola loves the Macintosh and being in partnership with your chip designer is a natural.

AT&T -- I know you are working on this. The key is that their 68000 UNIX PC is not selling. They need a way to make Mac software run on their box. They will confuse things by trying to involve UNIX in the discussion. The Mac interface should be viewed as a separate application interface that they can put on top of UNIX if they want. They will have to change the disk drive in the current UNIX PC. I believe that will be the only hardware change required.

We recently sent Chris Larson down to discuss making your 3.5" disk compatible with MS-DOS. Unfortunately the people he talked to didn't agree with us on the importance.

I want to help in any way I can with the licensing. Please give me a call.

Best regards,

(signed)
William H. Gates
Chairman

cc: Apple
Jean-Louis Gassee
Larry Tesler

Microsoft
Ida Cole
Jim Harris
Jeff Raikes
Jon Shirley