3 ms·

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'l

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
      >I don't think the IBM PC pushed Apple out of enterprise sales. Apple didn't want to go into those places. Apple absolutely did want to go into those places. But not at first. Apple began in 1977 by aiming at the hobbyist market; basically, people like Jobs and Woz's fellow members of the Homebrew Computer Club. (Despite selling electronics parts, Radio Shack always aimed—or, at least, claimed to aim—at small businesses with TRS-80.) VisiCalc came out of nowhere and suddenly made the Apple II—the only platform it ran on for its first 12 months, because Disk II was a ridiculously better floppy system than any other home computer—a business machine. While corporate IT buyers never made bulk purchases, and Apple never built up a corporate sales force, the II appeared on a lot of desks as people saw what VisiCalc could do and rushed out to buy it with their own money or departmental funds. Apple's intention with the Apple III in 1980 was to offer the successor to the II that would fix all of its faults regarding the business market, such as lack of native 80-column displays, lowercase, numeric keypad, more RAM, and larger storage. The III was a bust, though, and people kept buying the II. The PC in 1981 destroyed the already anemic III sales, and completely ended corporate II sales. >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. Completely different world. By that time Apple had long since given up directly competing with PCs and clones in the mainstream corporate market, and focused on the areas it remained strong in: Graphic design, publishing, and other "creative" markets. The Apple-branded network servers were one of the brief times it tried to widen enterprise sales; Xserve is another example. >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. Yes, that's something I could have mentioned in my list of alternate paths. Not Sun or Apollo workstations on every desk—far too expensive—but after 1985 or so X Window or NeWS boxes on every desk is viable, and then perhaps something like Sun Ray. We could have had in 1995 everyone being able to walk up to any terminal at work, put in a smart card, and have their current desktop appear.
rbanffy 5y ago
> 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. It'd be DR's MP/M, or Microsoft's Xenix. > There's cascading consequences that all have high variance. Indeed. This possible future forks all over the place because the PC market was quite chaotic at the time. It's absolutely impossible to predict with any sort of certainty what would happen. One prediction I haven't seen is MSX. MSX had the potential to commoditize the home computer segment (and leech money out of every manufacturer the same way they did with the PC)
- TMWNN 5y ago
  >> 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. >It'd be DR's MP/M, or Microsoft's Xenix. Agreed. Similarly, Microsoft gave up on Xenix once AT&T was allowed to enter the computer market, but had it not gone all-in on OS/2 then Windows in the latter half of the 1980s, Microsoft would surely have at least pushed its concurrent DOS outside its Europe OEM niche. >One prediction I haven't seen is MSX. MSX had the potential to commoditize the home computer segment (and leech money out of every manufacturer the same way they did with the PC) I considered mentioning MSX in my long reply but did not because the absence of an IBM PC would not have affected its success. In the UK, MSX was an also-ran compared to Sinclair, Commodore, Amstrad, and BBC/Acorn. In the US it appeared despite everyone in the early 1980s expecting/dreading the inevitable Japanese invasion of the home computer market. MSX only became significant in markets like Japan and Brazil where, for one reason or another, competing Western home-computer standards were not significant. And it never moved outside the low end; MSX never precluded (for example) PC-88, PC-98, or X68000 in Japan.

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
    >I don't think the IBM PC pushed Apple out of enterprise sales. Apple didn't want to go into those places. Apple absolutely did want to go into those places. But not at first. Apple began in 1977 by aiming at the hobbyist market; basically, people like Jobs and Woz's fellow members of the Homebrew Computer Club. (Despite selling electronics parts, Radio Shack always aimed—or, at least, claimed to aim—at small businesses with TRS-80.) VisiCalc came out of nowhere and suddenly made the Apple II—the only platform it ran on for its first 12 months, because Disk II was a ridiculously better floppy system than any other home computer—a business machine. While corporate IT buyers never made bulk purchases, and Apple never built up a corporate sales force, the II appeared on a lot of desks as people saw what VisiCalc could do and rushed out to buy it with their own money or departmental funds. Apple's intention with the Apple III in 1980 was to offer the successor to the II that would fix all of its faults regarding the business market, such as lack of native 80-column displays, lowercase, numeric keypad, more RAM, and larger storage. The III was a bust, though, and people kept buying the II. The PC in 1981 destroyed the already anemic III sales, and completely ended corporate II sales. >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. Completely different world. By that time Apple had long since given up directly competing with PCs and clones in the mainstream corporate market, and focused on the areas it remained strong in: Graphic design, publishing, and other "creative" markets. The Apple-branded network servers were one of the brief times it tried to widen enterprise sales; Xserve is another example. >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. Yes, that's something I could have mentioned in my list of alternate paths. Not Sun or Apollo workstations on every desk—far too expensive—but after 1985 or so X Window or NeWS boxes on every desk is viable, and then perhaps something like Sun Ray. We could have had in 1995 everyone being able to walk up to any terminal at work, put in a smart card, and have their current desktop appear.

rbanffy 5y ago

> 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. It'd be DR's MP/M, or Microsoft's Xenix. > There's cascading consequences that all have high variance. Indeed. This possible future forks all over the place because the PC market was quite chaotic at the time. It's absolutely impossible to predict with any sort of certainty what would happen. One prediction I haven't seen is MSX. MSX had the potential to commoditize the home computer segment (and leech money out of every manufacturer the same way they did with the PC)

TMWNN 5y ago
>> 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. >It'd be DR's MP/M, or Microsoft's Xenix. Agreed. Similarly, Microsoft gave up on Xenix once AT&T was allowed to enter the computer market, but had it not gone all-in on OS/2 then Windows in the latter half of the 1980s, Microsoft would surely have at least pushed its concurrent DOS outside its Europe OEM niche. >One prediction I haven't seen is MSX. MSX had the potential to commoditize the home computer segment (and leech money out of every manufacturer the same way they did with the PC) I considered mentioning MSX in my long reply but did not because the absence of an IBM PC would not have affected its success. In the UK, MSX was an also-ran compared to Sinclair, Commodore, Amstrad, and BBC/Acorn. In the US it appeared despite everyone in the early 1980s expecting/dreading the inevitable Japanese invasion of the home computer market. MSX only became significant in markets like Japan and Brazil where, for one reason or another, competing Western home-computer standards were not significant. And it never moved outside the low end; MSX never precluded (for example) PC-88, PC-98, or X68000 in Japan.