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I find the headline to be promise more than it delivered. A women had a husband (Bob) who was a genius at design and developing hardware accessories and later

I find the headline to be promise more than it delivered. A women had a husband (Bob) who was a genius at design and developing hardware accessories and later a full computer. He had little interest in running the business. His work created a hardware company called Vector Computers. His wife and another woman ran the business aspect of the company and the company did well. It did well thanks to the husband's identification of a huge market that offered a lot of opportunity. The company grew and this is certainly a credit for the two female executives. They were pioneers both as female executives and within getting in early in the computer industry. Once Bob learned about this soon to be released IBM PC he requested and begged the company to start making IBM PC clones and accessories. He said the company had a year left unless it started embracing the PC The now soon to be ex wife rejected this idea and kept the company running the same as always. She also fired her soon to be ex-husband. She did take the company public within that year and was generous allotting stocks to every employee in the company. That was also a first. I hope everyone sold their stock as soon as they could, given that the company died 2 years later. Because they are failed to adapt to a changing market and rejected advice of the technical founder and the guy who identified the market segment they started in.

WrtCdEvrydy 5y ago
> Once Bob learned about this soon to be released IBM PC he requested and begged the company to start making IBM PC clones and accessories. He said the company had a year left unless it started embracing the PC > The now soon to be ex wife rejected this idea and kept the company running the same as always. She also fired her soon to be ex-husband. How do you look at the technical person putting it together and just disregard everything they are saying? When my non-technical persons bring forward a good idea or a good suggestion, we tend to weigh it versus previous ideas and market outlook...
- soperj 5y ago
  >How do you look at the technical person putting it together and just disregard everything they are saying? Sounds like a large number of executives to me, honestly.
pavlov 5y ago
Now take this story and replace the wife with Steve Jobs and the husband with Woz. It’s basically the same. Jobs also rejected the advice of the technical co-founder in various matters, and insisted on staying away from producing IBM compatibles. In the end it worked out for Apple but not for Vector. With a different roll of the dice, it might have been the other way around. Luck plays a huge role in startup success.
- gunapologist99 5y ago
  > In the end it worked out for Apple but not for Vector. Did it? It very nearly did not. Unlike Vector, Steve Jobs always had a focus on something very special in mind: the very best design, of course (perhaps similar to the Vector CEO), but, more importantly, technical things that would re-define the industry, like windowed OS's and mice. And, even that relentless focus on having the best user experience was not enough to save Apple! The only thing that did save Apple was bringing Steve Jobs back, who immediately did the only thing he could. In a stroke of sheer genius (and/or luck), he wrangled a huge investment out of... Bill Gates, who was probably the name most associated with PC compatibles! The Vector story has none of these attributes, except for the nearly (or completely) going out of business part.
  - pavlov 5y ago
    Based on this article, Lore Harp of Vector doesn’t seem so different from Steve Jobs. She also prioritized design and ease-of-use. She also was an industry outsider with enough charisma to reach national magazine covers. It’s not like Jobs invented GUIs himself — he happened to be in the right place to learn about all the work already done at Xerox and bring it home. If things had been slightly different, maybe it would have been Lore Harp who went to PARC instead. The personality cult around famous founders is 99% selection bias. Sure, they were talented. So were hundreds or thousands of others in the same industry.
- jhgb 5y ago
  > and insisted on staying away from producing IBM compatibles That didn't turn out well for them in the end since they eventually had to build machines 90% similar to IBM PCs that were still able to run Windows in a VM, just so they wouldn't become obsolete after the G5 fiasco. So I'm not sure how you can conclusively claim that "it worked out for Apple".
hasmanean 5y ago
If they sold the stock, it would just be passing the loss onto the new buyers. In the grand scheme of things it would not reduce the net amount of suffering, but only transfer it to someone else.
- pavlov 5y ago
  It’s not the same. The seller in this case is someone who worked for the company for years and received the shares as compensation. The buyer is probably a fund or a speculator. Startup employees should never feel bad about selling their stock. The opportunity is rare enough.
  - gunapologist99 5y ago
    Agreed. Many "obvious" things are only obvious in hindsight.
shever73 5y ago
Thank you for the TLDR, as soon as I opened the site on mobile and was greeted with uncloseable video ads and a tiny area of screen real estate to actually read the article, I closed it down.
- le-mark 5y ago
  You should read the article, this is an uncharitable tldr. I’d always Heard about s100 and cpm but I didn’t realize there was this category of high priced business computers like the vector in the story.
jhgb 5y ago
So it's actually "How two bored 1970s housewives had no impact on the PC industry"? Because the decision to not build an IBM PC clone meant that IBM PC won, and the alternative decision to build an IBM PC clone would have meant that IBM PC clone would have also won? The only difference seems to be the fate of this particular company, not the PC industry.
musicale 5y ago
"Helped create" is accurate. S-100 and CP/M systems like those from Vector Graphic ruled the nascent PC industry in the 1970s before the rise of motherboard-based systems like the Apple II, and DOS started life as a CP/M clone, with largely compatible system call numbers. Even the Apple II ended up running CP/M as well via Microsoft's (!) Softcard. Perhaps it's a bit like giving deserved credit to Al Gore for (among other things) the Supercomputer Network Study Act and the High Performance Computing and Communications act, as well as the "information superhighway" term. I wonder if it would have been possible, as the article suggests, for more of the S-100 and CP/M companies to move to ISA and DOS (and x86) while keeping prices competitive with IBM and Apple?

WrtCdEvrydy 5y ago

> Once Bob learned about this soon to be released IBM PC he requested and begged the company to start making IBM PC clones and accessories. He said the company had a year left unless it started embracing the PC > The now soon to be ex wife rejected this idea and kept the company running the same as always. She also fired her soon to be ex-husband. How do you look at the technical person putting it together and just disregard everything they are saying? When my non-technical persons bring forward a good idea or a good suggestion, we tend to weigh it versus previous ideas and market outlook...

soperj 5y ago
>How do you look at the technical person putting it together and just disregard everything they are saying? Sounds like a large number of executives to me, honestly.

pavlov 5y ago

Now take this story and replace the wife with Steve Jobs and the husband with Woz. It’s basically the same. Jobs also rejected the advice of the technical co-founder in various matters, and insisted on staying away from producing IBM compatibles. In the end it worked out for Apple but not for Vector. With a different roll of the dice, it might have been the other way around. Luck plays a huge role in startup success.

gunapologist99 5y ago
> In the end it worked out for Apple but not for Vector. Did it? It very nearly did not. Unlike Vector, Steve Jobs always had a focus on something very special in mind: the very best design, of course (perhaps similar to the Vector CEO), but, more importantly, technical things that would re-define the industry, like windowed OS's and mice. And, even that relentless focus on having the best user experience was not enough to save Apple! The only thing that did save Apple was bringing Steve Jobs back, who immediately did the only thing he could. In a stroke of sheer genius (and/or luck), he wrangled a huge investment out of... Bill Gates, who was probably the name most associated with PC compatibles! The Vector story has none of these attributes, except for the nearly (or completely) going out of business part.
- pavlov 5y ago
  Based on this article, Lore Harp of Vector doesn’t seem so different from Steve Jobs. She also prioritized design and ease-of-use. She also was an industry outsider with enough charisma to reach national magazine covers. It’s not like Jobs invented GUIs himself — he happened to be in the right place to learn about all the work already done at Xerox and bring it home. If things had been slightly different, maybe it would have been Lore Harp who went to PARC instead. The personality cult around famous founders is 99% selection bias. Sure, they were talented. So were hundreds or thousands of others in the same industry.
jhgb 5y ago
> and insisted on staying away from producing IBM compatibles That didn't turn out well for them in the end since they eventually had to build machines 90% similar to IBM PCs that were still able to run Windows in a VM, just so they wouldn't become obsolete after the G5 fiasco. So I'm not sure how you can conclusively claim that "it worked out for Apple".

hasmanean 5y ago

If they sold the stock, it would just be passing the loss onto the new buyers. In the grand scheme of things it would not reduce the net amount of suffering, but only transfer it to someone else.

pavlov 5y ago
It’s not the same. The seller in this case is someone who worked for the company for years and received the shares as compensation. The buyer is probably a fund or a speculator. Startup employees should never feel bad about selling their stock. The opportunity is rare enough.
- gunapologist99 5y ago
  Agreed. Many "obvious" things are only obvious in hindsight.

shever73 5y ago

Thank you for the TLDR, as soon as I opened the site on mobile and was greeted with uncloseable video ads and a tiny area of screen real estate to actually read the article, I closed it down.

le-mark 5y ago
You should read the article, this is an uncharitable tldr. I’d always Heard about s100 and cpm but I didn’t realize there was this category of high priced business computers like the vector in the story.

jhgb 5y ago

So it's actually "How two bored 1970s housewives had no impact on the PC industry"? Because the decision to not build an IBM PC clone meant that IBM PC won, and the alternative decision to build an IBM PC clone would have meant that IBM PC clone would have also won? The only difference seems to be the fate of this particular company, not the PC industry.

musicale 5y ago

"Helped create" is accurate. S-100 and CP/M systems like those from Vector Graphic ruled the nascent PC industry in the 1970s before the rise of motherboard-based systems like the Apple II, and DOS started life as a CP/M clone, with largely compatible system call numbers. Even the Apple II ended up running CP/M as well via Microsoft's (!) Softcard. Perhaps it's a bit like giving deserved credit to Al Gore for (among other things) the Supercomputer Network Study Act and the High Performance Computing and Communications act, as well as the "information superhighway" term. I wonder if it would have been possible, as the article suggests, for more of the S-100 and CP/M companies to move to ISA and DOS (and x86) while keeping prices competitive with IBM and Apple?