Realistically in ~1980 or so the "weaknesses" of the x86 weren't so apparent. It was 1/2 way between the 8-biters (6502, 6800, etc) and the newer unproven desig

Realistically in ~1980 or so the "weaknesses" of the x86 weren't so apparent. It was 1/2 way between the 8-biters (6502, 6800, etc) and the newer unproven designs. Back then even the expensive apple /// was limited to 128K of ram and bank switching was common so having the x86 segment+offset was a big improvement. And of course the 8086 was a more mature design, etc. And frankly despite people wanting to rewrite history there was never a time when the 68000 was clearly a better processor. Yes years like 1985 when the amiga was released machines it showed up in looked light years ahead, but software compatibility/optimization/etc meant that within a year or so the PC was either on top or close to it again. It wasn't really until the early RISC machines started showing up that the PC was solidly eclipsed for more than a couple years straight. And many of the technical things people complained about (segmentation, few registers) either were partially false by the time they were complaining about them (ex the 386 provided flat 32-bit addressing in 1985, and even windows/386 was only a year and a half later) or net really a consideration. Ex: pascal/c compilers hid register pressure and caches sped up stack spilling/etc.