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On the other other hand, standardisation on a very poor standard cost the global economy $large_number of billions in wasted time, poor performance, poor securi

On the other other hand, standardisation on a very poor standard cost the global economy $large_number of billions in wasted time, poor performance, poor security and - let's not forget - incredibly high prices and low specs compared to existing alternatives. Standardisation had already happened in the S100 space. What IBM introduced was mass marketing to businesses. The technology was incidental. Apple already had a consumer dealer network, Amiga/Atari/Acorn had already made inroads, and there would have been a shake-out and consolidation. Without the PC it's likely some other manufacturer - possibly even Compaq - would have jumped on S100 instead and commoditised it. Probably with 68k and maybe Concurrent CP/M and/or BSD. It only needed one company to make the marketing leap. So standardisation was likely inevitable. Sales growth might have been slower, with more churn for consumer/gaming machines. But the technology would have started from a higher base. And it wouldn't have been held back by the miserably poor design of Intel hardware and MS software, both of which regressed existing levels of tech by at least a decade. The worst thing about the PC was that it established such low user expectations: slow, ugly, crippled machines that sort-of worked in a very limited way with poor security, stability, and reliability, and "standard" software products that were even worse.

oblio 5y ago
That not how anything works. Businesses wanted anything, literally any working product. The competition mostly stood there in their ivory towers (NeXT was the best representative of this), shrugged their noses at the folks that needed cheap computers for, you know, the computing revolution and over time, keeled over. > slow, ugly, crippled machines that sort-of worked in a very limited way with poor security, stability, and reliability, and "standard" software products that were even worse Yet they worked and they were cheap. Slow didn't matter because they worked. Ugly didn't matter because they worked. "Crippled machines that sort-of worked in a very limited way with poor security, , stability, and reliability, and 'standard' software products that were even worse" didn't matter because they worked and nobody truly cares about security as the main ongoing concern. Stability was good enough. Reliability was good enough. The standards were good enough. And the main thing, I repeat this: PCs were CHEAP. Anything I can't afford might as well not exist on the planet. It's not there. I can't do anything with it. Companies could afford PCs and they did what was needed. Not what some people thought would be needed, they did what was actually needed.
- technofiend 5y ago
  IBM allegedly crippled the PC fearing it would cannibalize their highly profitable small systems sales, namely System 36. They eventually brought out a smaller System 34 and ported Displaywrite to the PC but it was too little, too late. When the PC first came out it really wasn't that cheap. It took grey market PCs before consumers saw any decent discounts for brand name IBM PCs. Once clones landed then it was a race to the bottom. Even so having worked in retail computer sales myself at the time you are correct that cheap and functional often won the day over brand name. This was before Microsoft had cemented their lead on productivity apps so we sold plenty of Altos Xenix machines to small businesses and tons of Kaypros to budget-conscious college students. People were perfectly happy with Informix, Multicalc, Wordstar and Lotus 1-2-3.

oblio 5y ago

That not how anything works. Businesses wanted anything, literally any working product. The competition mostly stood there in their ivory towers (NeXT was the best representative of this), shrugged their noses at the folks that needed cheap computers for, you know, the computing revolution and over time, keeled over. > slow, ugly, crippled machines that sort-of worked in a very limited way with poor security, stability, and reliability, and "standard" software products that were even worse Yet they worked and they were cheap. Slow didn't matter because they worked. Ugly didn't matter because they worked. "Crippled machines that sort-of worked in a very limited way with poor security, , stability, and reliability, and 'standard' software products that were even worse" didn't matter because they worked and nobody truly cares about security as the main ongoing concern. Stability was good enough. Reliability was good enough. The standards were good enough. And the main thing, I repeat this: PCs were CHEAP. Anything I can't afford might as well not exist on the planet. It's not there. I can't do anything with it. Companies could afford PCs and they did what was needed. Not what some people thought would be needed, they did what was actually needed.

technofiend 5y ago
IBM allegedly crippled the PC fearing it would cannibalize their highly profitable small systems sales, namely System 36. They eventually brought out a smaller System 34 and ported Displaywrite to the PC but it was too little, too late. When the PC first came out it really wasn't that cheap. It took grey market PCs before consumers saw any decent discounts for brand name IBM PCs. Once clones landed then it was a race to the bottom. Even so having worked in retail computer sales myself at the time you are correct that cheap and functional often won the day over brand name. This was before Microsoft had cemented their lead on productivity apps so we sold plenty of Altos Xenix machines to small businesses and tons of Kaypros to budget-conscious college students. People were perfectly happy with Informix, Multicalc, Wordstar and Lotus 1-2-3.