4 ms·
Their decision to outsource the OS was the reason the clones had a market.
by incanus77 5y ago
Their decision to outsource the OS was the reason the clones had a market.
- pjmlp 5y agoWe are going in circles here, IBM did not want a clone market all, they were not able to prevent Compaq to go forward with their reverse engineering, although they did try first with the failed lawsuit and then with MCA PS/2 motherboards.
- incanus77 5y agoMy point is that without establishing the beachhead in the consumer market that IBM did, the clones wouldn't have had anything to work off of. I'm sure Compaq and others would've been years behind if they had started from scratch, but I'd actually like to know more about that potential alternative history.
- pjmlp 5y agoThe alternative story is what we are going back today, each OEM sells their vertical integrated experience. In this alternative universe most likely Amiga, Atari ST and Archimedes would keep existing in some form and most businesses wouldn't have cared about IBM PC or eventually got sooner into some UNIX workstation clone.