Just how many telephone directories is that then? It's hard to overstate how important this all was. Without it Acorn would have probably gone under and ARM wo

Just how many telephone directories is that then? It's hard to overstate how important this all was. Without it Acorn would have probably gone under and ARM would never have happened. And that's aside from the massive amounts of development going on with Spectrums and then later Amigas leading to the UK punching well above its weight in the games industry to the present day. One reason I'm so happy to have stayed doing mobile dev for 10+ years is that it has had the same sort of enthusiastic chaos that existed then. Yes, some things about not having a homogeneous ecosystem are a pain, but the benefits that arise from actual competition lead to a far better rate of progress all round. The incessant whining of developers is a leading cause of inertia.