4 ms·

Remembering the history, they had pretty much everyone signed up (including Sun for some reason) to convert their software. They were expensive, and like most

Remembering the history, they had pretty much everyone signed up (including Sun for some reason) to convert their software. They were expensive, and like most manufactures they didn't have a good on ramp for hobbyists and early developers. I think if they had noticed the trend to laptops, the rest would have followed.

beagle3 8y ago
Sun was in their blunder years at the time, also releasing x86 solaris and open sourcing it, so it's not surprising they signed up (I trust you when you say they did, I don't remember). HP signed up as part of the deal of killing their own processor division. Digital Alpha was somewhere between dying and dead/purchased by Intel. MIPS wasn't fairing very well already, especially with SGI committing slow long winded suicide by moving to Intel. Obviously everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I don't find your argument convincing. ARM had a much better story even with early portables/laptops with Windows CE, and were a dismal failure -- just like the later Surface RT. ARM had a power/battery-life advantage for laptops and support from Microsoft, and that didn't help; Switching to Itanium would not even have that. If Itanium found any general market success, it would have only been because of Intel's dominance. Luckily for us, that didn't happen.
- protomyth 8y ago
  Sun: https://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/1999090200706PS https://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/1999090200706PS ARM has just as crappy a story except from the opposite way but not the performance or PC. They had power consumption but didn't duplicate their early PC support in the US. Palm and Windows CE handhelds did ok but go clobbered by the iPhone. ARM never had a big launch with multiple PC OS vendors. ARM also didn't have motherboards available in PC configuration for a lot of its lifetime. That's what made the Raspberry Pi so special since it was an actual motherboard available to people and not some dev / eval board. Now, we see ARM showing up in the server and PC market because the performance is there, smart phones have paid for the research, and ARM is customizable / multi-vendor. If we had been lucky, IBM would have chosen the 68000.
  - beagle3 8y ago
    > Palm and Windows CE handhelds did ok but go clobbered by the iPhone. Palm and Windows CE were there since 1998, maybe even before. the iPhone came out in 2007. There were multiple ARM PDAs at the time (Compaq's iPaq, HP's Jornada, Palm's Pilot, many windows CE devices). > If we had been lucky, IBM would have chosen the 68000. Totally agree. The 68000 ISA is so elegant compared to the mess that is x86.
    - protomyth 8y ago
      The original Palms were Dragonball machines (68000) and CE actually ran pretty well on MIPS. Palm and CE are 1996. Like I said, they did ok, but never sold in the volume that the iPhone and later Android achieved. I dearly miss the 68000 and seriously sometimes wish the whole PowerPC thing didn't happen in favor of continued 68000. If the x86 proved anything its CISC / RISC wasn't exactly clear cut. The 88000 wasn't that bad except for a price that makes me think they were doing a bit of hallucinogens. I never got to play with ColdFire.
      - beagle3 8y ago
        Forgot about the Dragonball times ... Thanks.

beagle3 8y ago

Sun was in their blunder years at the time, also releasing x86 solaris and open sourcing it, so it's not surprising they signed up (I trust you when you say they did, I don't remember). HP signed up as part of the deal of killing their own processor division. Digital Alpha was somewhere between dying and dead/purchased by Intel. MIPS wasn't fairing very well already, especially with SGI committing slow long winded suicide by moving to Intel. Obviously everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I don't find your argument convincing. ARM had a much better story even with early portables/laptops with Windows CE, and were a dismal failure -- just like the later Surface RT. ARM had a power/battery-life advantage for laptops and support from Microsoft, and that didn't help; Switching to Itanium would not even have that. If Itanium found any general market success, it would have only been because of Intel's dominance. Luckily for us, that didn't happen.

protomyth 8y ago
Sun: https://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/1999090200706PS https://www.linuxtoday.com/developer/1999090200706PS ARM has just as crappy a story except from the opposite way but not the performance or PC. They had power consumption but didn't duplicate their early PC support in the US. Palm and Windows CE handhelds did ok but go clobbered by the iPhone. ARM never had a big launch with multiple PC OS vendors. ARM also didn't have motherboards available in PC configuration for a lot of its lifetime. That's what made the Raspberry Pi so special since it was an actual motherboard available to people and not some dev / eval board. Now, we see ARM showing up in the server and PC market because the performance is there, smart phones have paid for the research, and ARM is customizable / multi-vendor. If we had been lucky, IBM would have chosen the 68000.
- beagle3 8y ago
  > Palm and Windows CE handhelds did ok but go clobbered by the iPhone. Palm and Windows CE were there since 1998, maybe even before. the iPhone came out in 2007. There were multiple ARM PDAs at the time (Compaq's iPaq, HP's Jornada, Palm's Pilot, many windows CE devices). > If we had been lucky, IBM would have chosen the 68000. Totally agree. The 68000 ISA is so elegant compared to the mess that is x86.
  - protomyth 8y ago
    The original Palms were Dragonball machines (68000) and CE actually ran pretty well on MIPS. Palm and CE are 1996. Like I said, they did ok, but never sold in the volume that the iPhone and later Android achieved. I dearly miss the 68000 and seriously sometimes wish the whole PowerPC thing didn't happen in favor of continued 68000. If the x86 proved anything its CISC / RISC wasn't exactly clear cut. The 88000 wasn't that bad except for a price that makes me think they were doing a bit of hallucinogens. I never got to play with ColdFire.
    - beagle3 8y ago
      Forgot about the Dragonball times ... Thanks.