4 ms·

Alright, so let's do counterfactuals. IBM ignores the microcomputer, what's the world of say 1995 look like? Appliance style smart tvs? LCD screen based landli

Alright, so let's do counterfactuals. IBM ignores the microcomputer, what's the world of say 1995 look like? Appliance style smart tvs? LCD screen based landlines? Maybe a world of GRiD or GO computing tablets with Penpoint OS running on the AT&T hobbit processor? Jerry Kaplan never writing his seminal book on the affair and the word "startup" never being widely used? Canon and Brother having smarter word processors that take on the role of family computer? Everything run by Apple? Steve Jobs never getting muscled out and Omron introducing their Luna 88k to the US market, eating up the megabyte/megapixel/megapenny market that Jobs dreamed of? Nolan Bushnell never selling Atari and starting Chuck E Cheese? The 1982 video game crash never happening? Acorn flooding the American market with their Arm machines running RiscOS and then getting their ass kicked by Amiga? Quarterdeck DESQview taking off and being eaten up by Digital Research's GEM? RadioShack being the world's most valuable tech corporation with a stranglehold on every vertical in the industry only to finally get taken down by Be Inc? Ted Nelson's Xanadu running on Alan Kay's Dynabook with Jef Raskin doing the design? Microsoft continuing to focus on video games and releasing an 8 bit competitor to the NES that could be used on Control Video Corporation's network who never pivots and changes their name to AOL? Gates snatches up the ID software crew who writes Doom and Wolfenstein 3D as Microsoft projects and Bill Gates is talked about in the same breath as John Carmack and Shigeru Miyamoto? Meanwhile Gary Kildall, famed maker of CP/M becomes the richest man in the world and public enemy #1 in DOJ monopoly trials of the late 90s after he steals the top secret project OS/2 from IBM and clones it out from under them in project Windy City? The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder movie actually getting made? From the far horizons of the unknown come transcribed tales of new dimensions in time and space. These are stories of the future; adventures in which you'll live in a million could-be years on a thousand may-be worlds!

TMWNN 5y ago
>Appliance style smart tvs? Vernor Vinge's smart settop box as the computing center of the home never made sense. People connect video game consoles to the family TV because they play video games in lieu of watching TV. General-purpose computing can be and often is done in conjunction with the TV. >LCD screen based landlines? Only makes sense in the context of Minitel-style mass distribution of free terminals and centralized networks. The French state had economic and, more important, geopolitical reasons for pushing this; private US telcos did not. >Maybe a world of GRiD or GO computing tablets with Penpoint os running on the AT&T hobbit processor? Newton proved that it wasn't practical in 1995 to deliver accurate handwriting parsing in a consumer-level computing device, and that was by a company with enormous experience with consumer-level computing devices. >Canon and Brother having smarter word processors that take on the role of family computer? Only if they are ever willing to go the extra mile and develop OSes that support third-party applications, while providing developer kits. (Yes, yes, Brother did release a couple of PC-compatibles, but all it had to do was to license MS-DOS like every other clone maker.) There's no reason to think that the Canon Cat would be any less of a bomb in a PC-less world. >Everything run by Apple? In offices, yes. The IBM PC singlehandedly pushed Apple IIs out of corporate America. Desktop CP/M only worked in the SMB market because of VARs and SIs; Fortune 500 needed, if not a brand name it trusted (IBM), a company that seemed professional (Apple). Cromemco, Vector, IMSAI, and such never had the professionalism or market share to get themselves into boardrooms. A possibility is prepackaged CP/M boxes filtering upward from Osborn and Kaypro once they get beachheads into businesses via their sewing machines. But even were that to happen I suspect that the lack of a single 5.25" disk format is alone enough to prevent widespread CP/M adoption. >Nolan Bushnell never selling Atari and starting Chuck E Cheese? Happened before 1981. The best outcome for Atari, really, is Armonk deciding in summer 1980 that Boca Raton and all other IBM facilities are too hidebound to develop a successful inexpensive PC, and instead going ahead and full-fledged buying Atari from Warner Communications. IBM decides to follow the System 360 model and uses the 8-bit computer line as the center of an entire line of products, everything from a next-generation videogame console (the 5200, except in 1982 and 100% compatible with existing 8-bit software) to dumb terminals for businesses to the high-end 1450XLD mini-workstation. >The 1982 video game crash never happening? Only if Atari (whether IBM-run or not) puts out a Nintendo-style licensing system enforced by lockout chip. The problem is that third-party publishers would just focus on Intellivision and ColecoVision instead. The model only works if everyone does it. >Acorn flooding the American market with their Arm machines running RiscOS and then getting their ass kicked by Amiga? Acorn was completely inept at marketing in its home market. Even with government subsidies and status as quasi-official "British home computer" the BBC Micro's market share was far smaller than Sinclair and Commodore, and comparable to Amstrad despite its late entry, and as you indicate the Amiga and ST crushed the RiscOS boxes in the UK too. Commodore UK may have start to finish been better marketers than the US parent, but there's no reason to think that Acorn US would have been any better than in its UK parent; the brief attempt to market the BBC Micro in the US is evidence of that. >Quarterdeck DESQview taking off and being eaten up by Digital Research's GEM? No IBM PC = No DESQview. We might have, however, seen Concurrent CP/M and MP/M continue CP/M-80's co-dominance of the business market outside Apple. >RadioShack being the world's most valuable tech corporation with a stranglehold on every vertical in the industry? Absolutely not. Radio Shack almost willfully throwing away a natural monopoly in the US personal computer market is among the biggest missed opportunities in history. One Tandy Tower got lucky with the TRS-80, then did everything possible to ruin it. It got lucky again with the Tandy 1000 then got run over by the rush to zero margins that hit everyone else in the US industry outside Dell, Compaq, and HP. Even without the PC, by 1981 Apple had surpassed Tandy by encouraging third-party developers despite the latter's huge early lead and massive proven supply and retail chains. >Microsoft continuing to focus on video games and releasing an 8 bit competitor to the NES that could be used on Control Video Corporation's network who never pivots and changes their name to AOL? I know you especially don't mean this to be serious, but ... this isn't completely crazy. Without the PC, Microsoft remains focused on programming languages with small consumer (Adventure, Decathlon) and hardware (Z80 SoftCard) businesses. I know I said that the settop box model doesn't work for general-purpose computing, but I can see ex-P&G marketer Ballmer convincing Gates and Allen that a locked-down videogame console with a razor-and-blades model is both a good moneymaker and a way of getting the Microsoft brand into homes. >The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder movie actually getting made? I'd like to see on the big screen that unnamed developer toiling away in the background, subtly getting more and more stressed, until sometime in act 5 he suddenly quits leaving that resignation letter on Tom West's desk. Maybe Netflix will do a miniseries.
- kristopolous 5y ago
  I like how you responded to that. You're not playing the counterfactual game though. We're supposed to be travelling in the world of our creation and what we'll see will defy explanation. For instance desqview would have run on some imaginary DOS like system that would have been created in the power vacuum of the mid 80s. We have to assume that IBM was a suffocating force on the industry and without it, there's more room to succeed. There's cascading consequences that all have high variance.
  - TMWNN 5y ago
    I know. You put so much effort into the joke (and obviously have the requisite historical background to do so) that I wanted to deal with it on face value.
    - kristopolous 5y ago
      I think Soul of a New Machine could still work as some gritty All The President's Men style movie. Just make it genuinely look and feel like it's from the era and I'm down. But use the garish colors, harsh lights, and loud offices. The bad hair, smoking at the office and sexist office remarks. Just like how there's modern italo disco and synthwave bands I want it to fully escape from the now
      - rbanffy 5y ago
        It could easily be made into a series not unlike Halt and Catch Fire. Just don't ever try to make an IBM mainframe boot PC-DOS with a CGA font and do black on white on an IBM 3278... Ever... Jesus! Didn't they have technical advisors in production?
      - watersb 5y ago
        I thank you both for a great thread of responses. I don't think the IBM PC pushed Apple out of enterprise sales. Apple didn't want to go into those places. Steve Jobs was fired by the board of directors at Apple because (among other things) was going to screw up any corporate deals that Apple might wish to pursue. I haven't any direct evidence, but I managed a medium sized corporate network of Macintosh computers in early 1990s. Their attempts at telling a coherent story for business systems was a bit of reality distortion field, Sculley-style. Ironically, their network server play was a partnership with IBM, rebadged RS/6000 crates. So hmm, maybe sufficiently counter factual to play in this alternate reality -- but I think it would be more likely in business systems to see network of workstations from Sun or Apollo take some wins. DEC VAX servers, oh boy!

TMWNN 5y ago

>Appliance style smart tvs? Vernor Vinge's smart settop box as the computing center of the home never made sense. People connect video game consoles to the family TV because they play video games in lieu of watching TV. General-purpose computing can be and often is done in conjunction with the TV. >LCD screen based landlines? Only makes sense in the context of Minitel-style mass distribution of free terminals and centralized networks. The French state had economic and, more important, geopolitical reasons for pushing this; private US telcos did not. >Maybe a world of GRiD or GO computing tablets with Penpoint os running on the AT&T hobbit processor? Newton proved that it wasn't practical in 1995 to deliver accurate handwriting parsing in a consumer-level computing device, and that was by a company with enormous experience with consumer-level computing devices. >Canon and Brother having smarter word processors that take on the role of family computer? Only if they are ever willing to go the extra mile and develop OSes that support third-party applications, while providing developer kits. (Yes, yes, Brother did release a couple of PC-compatibles, but all it had to do was to license MS-DOS like every other clone maker.) There's no reason to think that the Canon Cat would be any less of a bomb in a PC-less world. >Everything run by Apple? In offices, yes. The IBM PC singlehandedly pushed Apple IIs out of corporate America. Desktop CP/M only worked in the SMB market because of VARs and SIs; Fortune 500 needed, if not a brand name it trusted (IBM), a company that seemed professional (Apple). Cromemco, Vector, IMSAI, and such never had the professionalism or market share to get themselves into boardrooms. A possibility is prepackaged CP/M boxes filtering upward from Osborn and Kaypro once they get beachheads into businesses via their sewing machines. But even were that to happen I suspect that the lack of a single 5.25" disk format is alone enough to prevent widespread CP/M adoption. >Nolan Bushnell never selling Atari and starting Chuck E Cheese? Happened before 1981. The best outcome for Atari, really, is Armonk deciding in summer 1980 that Boca Raton and all other IBM facilities are too hidebound to develop a successful inexpensive PC, and instead going ahead and full-fledged buying Atari from Warner Communications. IBM decides to follow the System 360 model and uses the 8-bit computer line as the center of an entire line of products, everything from a next-generation videogame console (the 5200, except in 1982 and 100% compatible with existing 8-bit software) to dumb terminals for businesses to the high-end 1450XLD mini-workstation. >The 1982 video game crash never happening? Only if Atari (whether IBM-run or not) puts out a Nintendo-style licensing system enforced by lockout chip. The problem is that third-party publishers would just focus on Intellivision and ColecoVision instead. The model only works if everyone does it. >Acorn flooding the American market with their Arm machines running RiscOS and then getting their ass kicked by Amiga? Acorn was completely inept at marketing in its home market. Even with government subsidies and status as quasi-official "British home computer" the BBC Micro's market share was far smaller than Sinclair and Commodore, and comparable to Amstrad despite its late entry, and as you indicate the Amiga and ST crushed the RiscOS boxes in the UK too. Commodore UK may have start to finish been better marketers than the US parent, but there's no reason to think that Acorn US would have been any better than in its UK parent; the brief attempt to market the BBC Micro in the US is evidence of that. >Quarterdeck DESQview taking off and being eaten up by Digital Research's GEM? No IBM PC = No DESQview. We might have, however, seen Concurrent CP/M and MP/M continue CP/M-80's co-dominance of the business market outside Apple. >RadioShack being the world's most valuable tech corporation with a stranglehold on every vertical in the industry? Absolutely not. Radio Shack almost willfully throwing away a natural monopoly in the US personal computer market is among the biggest missed opportunities in history. One Tandy Tower got lucky with the TRS-80, then did everything possible to ruin it. It got lucky again with the Tandy 1000 then got run over by the rush to zero margins that hit everyone else in the US industry outside Dell, Compaq, and HP. Even without the PC, by 1981 Apple had surpassed Tandy by encouraging third-party developers despite the latter's huge early lead and massive proven supply and retail chains. >Microsoft continuing to focus on video games and releasing an 8 bit competitor to the NES that could be used on Control Video Corporation's network who never pivots and changes their name to AOL? I know you especially don't mean this to be serious, but ... this isn't completely crazy. Without the PC, Microsoft remains focused on programming languages with small consumer (Adventure, Decathlon) and hardware (Z80 SoftCard) businesses. I know I said that the settop box model doesn't work for general-purpose computing, but I can see ex-P&G marketer Ballmer convincing Gates and Allen that a locked-down videogame console with a razor-and-blades model is both a good moneymaker and a way of getting the Microsoft brand into homes. >The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder movie actually getting made? I'd like to see on the big screen that unnamed developer toiling away in the background, subtly getting more and more stressed, until sometime in act 5 he suddenly quits leaving that resignation letter on Tom West's desk. Maybe Netflix will do a miniseries.

kristopolous 5y ago
I like how you responded to that. You're not playing the counterfactual game though. We're supposed to be travelling in the world of our creation and what we'll see will defy explanation. For instance desqview would have run on some imaginary DOS like system that would have been created in the power vacuum of the mid 80s. We have to assume that IBM was a suffocating force on the industry and without it, there's more room to succeed. There's cascading consequences that all have high variance.
- TMWNN 5y ago
  I know. You put so much effort into the joke (and obviously have the requisite historical background to do so) that I wanted to deal with it on face value.
  - kristopolous 5y ago
    I think Soul of a New Machine could still work as some gritty All The President's Men style movie. Just make it genuinely look and feel like it's from the era and I'm down. But use the garish colors, harsh lights, and loud offices. The bad hair, smoking at the office and sexist office remarks. Just like how there's modern italo disco and synthwave bands I want it to fully escape from the now
    - rbanffy 5y ago
      It could easily be made into a series not unlike Halt and Catch Fire. Just don't ever try to make an IBM mainframe boot PC-DOS with a CGA font and do black on white on an IBM 3278... Ever... Jesus! Didn't they have technical advisors in production?
    - watersb 5y ago
      I thank you both for a great thread of responses. I don't think the IBM PC pushed Apple out of enterprise sales. Apple didn't want to go into those places. Steve Jobs was fired by the board of directors at Apple because (among other things) was going to screw up any corporate deals that Apple might wish to pursue. I haven't any direct evidence, but I managed a medium sized corporate network of Macintosh computers in early 1990s. Their attempts at telling a coherent story for business systems was a bit of reality distortion field, Sculley-style. Ironically, their network server play was a partnership with IBM, rebadged RS/6000 crates. So hmm, maybe sufficiently counter factual to play in this alternate reality -- but I think it would be more likely in business systems to see network of workstations from Sun or Apollo take some wins. DEC VAX servers, oh boy!