4 ms·

> ISA slot cards This was actually bigger than I think people remember. IBM gave away all the information on their bus standard immediately. They clearly und

> ISA slot cards This was actually bigger than I think people remember. IBM gave away all the information on their bus standard immediately. They clearly understood they had to create a robust third party add on market for the PC and this would be key to driving the platform. They were not wrong.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
They were not wrong in terms of what had to be done to make the OC platform the dominant one, except they didn't get to profit from the PC business for too long. The openness "mistake" is what Apple fought to avoid.
- toyg 3y ago
  And Apple almost died because of that opposition to openness. They only returned to profitability once they promised to be as open as everyone else: having intel processors and a standard Unix userland. (They then got filthy rich by effectively pivoting to portable computing, a world where openness and standardization were never essential.)
  - lmm 3y ago
    > And Apple almost died because of that opposition to openness. They only returned to profitability once they promised to be as open as everyone else: having intel processors and a standard Unix userland. Not really. The brief time when they allowed what we would now call "hackintoshes" was when they came closest to dying. They adopted intel processors for cost reasons, but went out of their way to keep their system "different". (And IIRC that was after they'd recovered to healthy profitability on the back of the iMacs and iPod)
  - qwytw 3y ago
    > They only returned to profitability once they promised to be as open as everyone else: having intel They were profitable in the early 2000s with PowerPC and they probably would've stayed on it had it remained competitive with Intel.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
shrubble 3y ago
They gave it away because of the consent decree they were operating under. Until the consent decree, IBM preferred to rent/lease their computers to you, not sell them.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago

They were not wrong in terms of what had to be done to make the OC platform the dominant one, except they didn't get to profit from the PC business for too long. The openness "mistake" is what Apple fought to avoid.

toyg 3y ago
And Apple almost died because of that opposition to openness. They only returned to profitability once they promised to be as open as everyone else: having intel processors and a standard Unix userland. (They then got filthy rich by effectively pivoting to portable computing, a world where openness and standardization were never essential.)
- lmm 3y ago
  > And Apple almost died because of that opposition to openness. They only returned to profitability once they promised to be as open as everyone else: having intel processors and a standard Unix userland. Not really. The brief time when they allowed what we would now call "hackintoshes" was when they came closest to dying. They adopted intel processors for cost reasons, but went out of their way to keep their system "different". (And IIRC that was after they'd recovered to healthy profitability on the back of the iMacs and iPod)
- qwytw 3y ago
  > They only returned to profitability once they promised to be as open as everyone else: having intel They were profitable in the early 2000s with PowerPC and they probably would've stayed on it had it remained competitive with Intel.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]

shrubble 3y ago

They gave it away because of the consent decree they were operating under. Until the consent decree, IBM preferred to rent/lease their computers to you, not sell them.