[NTLK] OT: was C64 on app store? now Is IBM evil?

[James Fraser]

Hello,

--- On Wed, 9/22/10, Michael Grossman <ceratoph at SDF.LONESTAR.ORG> wrote:

>No graphics, pathetic speaker, expensive software, expensive hardware add >ons... And it cost 3-5X what the competition did!

Well, I'll agree with you on that last part, anyway.  That was why the clone manufacturers ended up eating IBM's lunch: they could offer the same thing, but for less money.

Business people are nothing if not cost-conscious. IBM, in its rush to get the PC to market, used mostly off-the-shelf components (rather than designing everything from scratch, like they usually did).  Unfortunately for IBM, what they could do, other folks could do, too, and for less money (as you point out).

Bad for IBM, but good for everyone else. Apple experienced the same syndrome in the mid-90's with Power Computing and the other Mac clone makers.  However, Steve Jobs, shrewd businessman that he is, (was?) saw what was happening and pulled the plug on licensing the Mac OS to third party clone makers.

That meant that Apple could go right on charging a premium for what they had to offer, as there was no one around to undercut them.  It also explains why Apple has only controlled roughly 10% of the computing market from the mid-90's all the way through to the present day. Apple, like the old IBM, is not afraid to charge for their stuff, and it shows. 

> It was obvious even to a 12-year-old that IBM PCs were definitely not >ready for home users or the classroom.  

No offense, but that's hardly surprising, seeing as the IBM PC was never directed at home users or the classroom: IBM was known as a company that produced -business- machines, and the IBM PC was no exception.

The PCjr was IBM's first serious attempt to break into the home market (we all know how that one went).  The jr was a severely compromised machine (the chiclet keyboard was simply horrifying, for one thing).  This would have been okay, but the home computer market at the time was positively cutthroat (as that link to the Apple//c vs. PCjr war indicates).

As far as the classroom goes, the educational market has always been Apple's forte, not IBM's.  The only reason I ran into PCs in school back in the mid-Pleistocene was because the CIS majors needed to have access to the same types of machines they'd encounter in the business world. 

>The over-priced behemoth sat on a desk while a vibrant trade in pirated >C64 games and apps developed underground amongst the students.  

Sir, I don't think IBM developed the PC so that schoolkids could trade pirated games for it. :)

I understand where you're coming from, but you're really talking apples and oranges here.  The PCjr blew chunks, certainly, but the original IBM PC had a fairly high build quality because, well, that's what people expected from IBM.  If you ever come across an original IBM PC in a junk shop, check out the keyboard on it, then contrast it to what Apple (and just about everyone else) offers as a "keyboard" nowadays.  You'll find yourself shaking your head.  

(Better yet, find a keyboard for the later model IBM PC/AT, get an appropriate PS/2 adapter for it, and you'll have a keyboard you can use for life.  No jive.)

In short, IBM offered staid, boring machines to staid, boring people who did staid, boring things to make lots of money (well, to make money, anyway).  The C64, on the other hand, was a computer than someone who was plunked down in front of an IBM PC at work looked forward to messing around with at home, where they weren't expected to do staid, boring things with it, but whatever they felt like doing (usually programming, music, and games).  Apples and oranges.

Don Estridge was the guy who headed the research team that came up with the IBM PC.  I'll give you some idea of the esteem in which Steve Jobs held him:

In 1983, Jobs not only offered Don Estridge the position of president of Apple at $1 million a year, (this was 1983; a million dollars a year was an enormous salary back then) but -also- a $1 million signing bonus, -and- $2 million to buy a house; Estridge turned him down. 

http://www.thocp.net/biographies/estridge_don.html

As I say, I understand where you're coming from, but please do not underestimate the ability of staid, boring people to do very exciting things.  To be honest, I didn't think all that much of the IBM PC at the time, either, but now I'm grateful that IBM made practical, cut-price computing a reality for a large chunk of the population with the introduction of their machine (even if it did come about solely as a by-product ;)


Best,

James Fraser