4 ms·

How about the US and MS ruining everything as usual? "In April 1989 the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative issued a preliminary report accusing BTRON of b

How about the US and MS ruining everything as usual? "In April 1989 the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative issued a preliminary report accusing BTRON of being a trade barrier, as it only functioned in Japan, and asked the Japanese government not to make it standard in schools. TRON was included along with rice, semiconductors, and telecommunications equipment in a list of items targeted by Super-301 (complete stop of import based on section 301 of the Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988). It was removed from the list after the USTR inspection team visited the TRON Association in May. In June the Japanese government expressed their regret at U.S. intervention but accepted this request not to make it standard in schools, thus ending the BTRON project. Callon opines that the project had nevertheless run into such difficulties that the U.S. intervention allowed the government to save face from cancelling the project. According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, in 1989 US officials feared that TRON could undercut American dominance in computers, but that in the end PC software and chips based on the TRON technology proved no match for Windows and Intel's processors as a global standard. In the 1980s Microsoft had at least once lobbied Washington about TRON until backing off, but Ken Sakamura himself believed Microsoft wasn't the impetus behind the Super-301 listing in 1989. Known for his off the cuff remarks, in 2004 governor of Tokyo Shintaro Ishihara mentioned in his column post concerning international trade policy that TRON was dropped because Carla Anderson Hills had threatened Ryutaro Hashimoto over it." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRON_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TRON_Project

Dalewyn 2y ago
No; Japan would have eventually stumbled and fell into obscurity even without any American interference. It's a running joke at this point, because Japanese cannot compromise quality to make costs reasonable. In an environment where the world produces goods 80~90% as good as Japanese ones for 1/4th~1/8th the cost, who in their right mind buys Japanese? This is what happened to Japan's entire electronics industry, home appliance industry, and more. Japan still has a domestic computer industry by a technicality (it's all Made In China) primarily fended over by Hitachi and Panasonic, but most westerners likely won't know because they simply don't sell overseas. I'm not going to bother getting into how Japanese are horrible with software too.
- hakfoo 2y ago
  The cost/quality thing doesn't mean they couldn't have maintained a "halo product" line that steered the platform. It could have been like the early 1990s PC market: government with a 'buy domestic' mandate or budget-no-object buyers might have bought a PS/2 Model 80 or Deskpro 386, but the masses, especially overseas, would buy a white-box 386DX made of Taiwanese parts. There's an interesting contrast: while Japan produced MSX-- a clear example that a multi-vendor standard can be wildly successful-- they missed the idea of a clone ecosystem for their heavier-duty professional machines. Why weren't there vendors cranking out clones of the PC-98, FM Towns, or X68000? Did they require more propriatery special sauce than an IBM 5150, or was there a cultural/market difficulty that would have caused them to flop on the market? OTOH, perhaps part of the problem was that the features Japan needed had poor cost/benefit ratios outside of the CJK market: you either have to make the enhanced video stuff optional, reducing platform standardization, or charge people for a feature they don't see as immediately beneficial.
- hedora 2y ago
  My switch and midrange sony tv (which just turned ten years old, and is still “good enough”) seem like decent counterexamples.
- justsomehnguy 2y ago
  > It's a running joke at this point, because Japanese cannot compromise quality to make costs reasonable. An old anecdote: A company places an order to produce some gizmo through a Japanese firm. The order states what is could be "up to three non-working gizmos per one hundred in the final shipment". The order is completed, the employee comes to get it, sees a big packed boxes and a small one. He asks "what's in the big boxes?" and receives "That's your one hundred gizmos, like you ordered". He asks again "But what is in this small box there?" and receives "That's your three non-working gizmos, like you ordered".
- pezezin 2y ago
  > It's a running joke at this point, because Japanese cannot compromise quality to make costs reasonable. As someone living in Japan, I don't buy this argument. There are plenty of shoddy Japanese products, number one being the houses (but I guess that is not something that you can export). > I'm not going to bother getting into how Japanese are horrible with software too. Here I fully agree. Anybody who has to suffer the software and web services made in here knows how bad it can be.
TacticalCoder 2y ago
> How about the US and MS ruining everything as usual? My personal theory is that MS set the human race back at least 20 years. YMMV.
- agumonkey 2y ago
  How would your alternate timeline look, genuinely curious. Sometimes I fear that the current one looks mediocre but if you took another path it would have been worse for random reasons.
  - ghaff 2y ago
    Given the independent software vendor model, you were going to end up with a very small number of mass market operating systems/platforms one way or the other. It was certainly happening in the large commercial computer system space. In fact, the somewhat surprise is that Microsoft didn't become even more dominant. A lot of people certainly expected it to.
agumonkey 2y ago
potential demo of BTRON https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYfoCe6q28A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYfoCe6q28A

Dalewyn 2y ago

No; Japan would have eventually stumbled and fell into obscurity even without any American interference. It's a running joke at this point, because Japanese cannot compromise quality to make costs reasonable. In an environment where the world produces goods 80~90% as good as Japanese ones for 1/4th~1/8th the cost, who in their right mind buys Japanese? This is what happened to Japan's entire electronics industry, home appliance industry, and more. Japan still has a domestic computer industry by a technicality (it's all Made In China) primarily fended over by Hitachi and Panasonic, but most westerners likely won't know because they simply don't sell overseas. I'm not going to bother getting into how Japanese are horrible with software too.

hakfoo 2y ago
The cost/quality thing doesn't mean they couldn't have maintained a "halo product" line that steered the platform. It could have been like the early 1990s PC market: government with a 'buy domestic' mandate or budget-no-object buyers might have bought a PS/2 Model 80 or Deskpro 386, but the masses, especially overseas, would buy a white-box 386DX made of Taiwanese parts. There's an interesting contrast: while Japan produced MSX-- a clear example that a multi-vendor standard can be wildly successful-- they missed the idea of a clone ecosystem for their heavier-duty professional machines. Why weren't there vendors cranking out clones of the PC-98, FM Towns, or X68000? Did they require more propriatery special sauce than an IBM 5150, or was there a cultural/market difficulty that would have caused them to flop on the market? OTOH, perhaps part of the problem was that the features Japan needed had poor cost/benefit ratios outside of the CJK market: you either have to make the enhanced video stuff optional, reducing platform standardization, or charge people for a feature they don't see as immediately beneficial.
hedora 2y ago
My switch and midrange sony tv (which just turned ten years old, and is still “good enough”) seem like decent counterexamples.
justsomehnguy 2y ago
> It's a running joke at this point, because Japanese cannot compromise quality to make costs reasonable. An old anecdote: A company places an order to produce some gizmo through a Japanese firm. The order states what is could be "up to three non-working gizmos per one hundred in the final shipment". The order is completed, the employee comes to get it, sees a big packed boxes and a small one. He asks "what's in the big boxes?" and receives "That's your one hundred gizmos, like you ordered". He asks again "But what is in this small box there?" and receives "That's your three non-working gizmos, like you ordered".
pezezin 2y ago
> It's a running joke at this point, because Japanese cannot compromise quality to make costs reasonable. As someone living in Japan, I don't buy this argument. There are plenty of shoddy Japanese products, number one being the houses (but I guess that is not something that you can export). > I'm not going to bother getting into how Japanese are horrible with software too. Here I fully agree. Anybody who has to suffer the software and web services made in here knows how bad it can be.

TacticalCoder 2y ago

> How about the US and MS ruining everything as usual? My personal theory is that MS set the human race back at least 20 years. YMMV.

agumonkey 2y ago
How would your alternate timeline look, genuinely curious. Sometimes I fear that the current one looks mediocre but if you took another path it would have been worse for random reasons.
- ghaff 2y ago
  Given the independent software vendor model, you were going to end up with a very small number of mass market operating systems/platforms one way or the other. It was certainly happening in the large commercial computer system space. In fact, the somewhat surprise is that Microsoft didn't become even more dominant. A lot of people certainly expected it to.

agumonkey 2y ago

potential demo of BTRON https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYfoCe6q28A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yYfoCe6q28A