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> an architecturally guaranteed 16MB of room to play in would have changed the face of the software industry in the 1980s I don't think it would have, because
by manholio 4y ago
> an architecturally guaranteed 16MB of room to play in would have changed the face of the software industry in the 1980s
I don't think it would have, because such amounts of RAM were prohibitively expensive into the late 80s. It would have changed the way software accessed the available RAM, made life easier for developers and improved compatibility be removing various kludges, but largely computers would have looked and behaved similarly, having largely similar specs.
- kabdib 4y agoVisiCorp was developing their VisiOn platform in the 1984-ish timeframe. They were bending heaven and earth to fit into 640K. Telling their corporate customers, "Buy another 512K of RAM" would probably have saved their company and let them ship a number of world-class productivity products, and given Windows some interesting competition. It's easy to second guess this stuff, on the other hand 512K of RAM was about $120 in 1985. We shipped the Atari ST with that much, when having that amount of memory on a Mac was pretty rare.