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From: rwa@cs.AthabascaU.CA (Ross Alexander)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix,comp.sys.ibm.pc,comp.unix.xenix
Subject: Re: IBM and Apple Operating Systems (Re: dosread.c again)
Message-ID: <1211@atha.AthabascaU.CA>
Date: 3 Nov 89 17:23:53 GMT
References: <6724@ficc.uu.net> <1774@naucse.UUCP>
Organization: Athabasca University
Lines: 33

wew@naucse.UUCP (Bill Wilson) writes:

>From article <6724@ficc.uu.net>, by peter@ficc.uu.net (Peter da Silva):
>> No, we'd have something based on Concurrent CP/M, OS/9, SOS, or some other
>> decent DOS of that period. We'd have something better.
>> IBM didn't create the PC indusry. It doesn't do that any more. It looked and
>> it saw a thriving industry, and said "I want that". So it took it.
>What thriving industry?  At the point that the IBM PC came out there
>was little going on in the Home/Desktop PC market.  Yes there were
>CP/M based machines that could be purchased for a small fortune, but
>I would not call it a thriving industry.  IBM went out on a limb 
>and the gamble paid off.

Foo.  There was definitely a very active small-player industry going
in the 198[12] time frame.  IBM just walked in and took it over.  No
risk was involved; the typical Pavlovian attitude of non-computer
types when confronted with the mystic trigrammaton (three-letter-word)
and the fact that the biggest segment of the personal-computer market
was people who didn't want to buy into anything but an utterly sure
thing delivered the market to IBM on a plate.  Period.  It's called
buying the business.  If your pockets are deep enough, and Big Blue
has very deep pockets, it's a dead certainty.

The PC was no cheaper, no faster, and had a lot less software in 1981
than did my Heath H89.  I benched the two, naturally I've discarded
the data but the conclusions stay with me clearly enough ;-).  But
Heath had the wrong market image (they were seen as a hacker's
vendor), and couldn't match IBMs sales/service/var network.  Not that
I'm a big fan of Heath - they could indeed be a royal canadian pain in
the *ss to deal with.  They took my money (over $4000.00) and sat on
it for months before delivering...

	Ross