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Your comment resonates with me - it wasn't IBM that made the PC special, it was the lower cost alternative clones that made it accessible. Something that Apple
by hermitdev 8y ago
Your comment resonates with me - it wasn't IBM that made the PC special, it was the lower cost alternative clones that made it accessible. Something that Apple shunned at the time and nearly became their death nail had it not been the investment by MS in the mid-90s.
- AnimalMuppet 8y agoIn fact, that's how IBM lost the PC. They came out with PS/2, which was patent-encumbered, so that they could kill the clone market. But it turned out that "low cost because clonable" beat "best technology but higher price".
- karmakaze 8y agoIBM also marketed OS/2 along with PS/2 in hopes that they would be adopted together, but it wasn't until OS/2 had good support for non-IBM hardware (v1.3/2.x) that it got wider spread adoption before being relegated to checkout computers.
- spamizbad 8y agoI think one thing to also consider was the flexibility of the clones from that period. Upgradability was a bigger selling point back then: A computer was a major financial investment, and the idea that you'd need to buy another one in a few years because it wouldn't run the latest software gave consumers anxiety. So if you could say "Look at all the slots and free drive bays!" you could convince people that, sure, this is $2000 today but I won't be stuck spending another $2000 a year later.
- ForHackernews 8y ago> their death nail Just FYI, the phrase is "death knell": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_knell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_knell This is a common 'eggcorn' (https://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/1130/nail/ https://eggcorns.lascribe.net/english/1130/nail/) because 'knell' is an old-fashioned word virtually unused outside of this one idiomatic phrase.
- hermitdev 8y agoKnew I was getting it wrong...