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>the PC platform had only succeeded because IBM opened it up to clones It didn't, the team behind Project Chess used off-the-shelf parts to cut down on costs a
by JVIDEL 14y ago
>the PC platform had only succeeded because IBM opened it up to clones
It didn't, the team behind Project Chess used off-the-shelf parts to cut down on costs and dev times so the end product was also easier to reverse engineer.
A company did just that and made a BIOS that didn't infringe on IBM patents. Couple that with an Intel processor and a DOS copy you could buy fair and square from Microsoft and you got a Clone just as good as an official IBM PC.
On Mac clones, it wasn't a bad idea, just too little too late: by the time Apple decided to go ahead with OEMs the Mac's marketshare was a shadow of its former self and Apple was already in trouble. Windows had become the standard, nuff said.
- etfb 14y agoYep, I'm more or less speaking from the viewpoint of the time. The received wisdom was that it was IBM's deliberate decision to allow clones that made the difference; nowadays we can see that this was only part of the story, but that original belief coloured how people saw things. On the other hand, though, perhaps the decision to use off-the-shelf parts was also part of the wider clone-friendly decision process. So it's not an either/or, even in hindsight.
- JVIDEL 14y agoIBM didn't want clones, it created the PS/2 to make a PC that couldn't be reverse engineered and cloned by the competition, but even then it was too late. If IBM could they would have banned all clones, but as I said before OEMs weren't infringing any patents so they couldn't be sued nor stopped.
- etfb 14y agoThat was a considerable number of years after the PC rewrote the personal computer market. I don't think the PS/2 was on their radar when they did what they did with the first PC.