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From: gillies@m.cs.uiuc.edu
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: A philosophic question
Message-ID: <8400205@m.cs.uiuc.edu>
Date: 16 Dec 89 08:52:00 GMT
References: <1635@xn.LL.MIT.EDU>
Lines: 14
Nf-ID: #R:xn.LL.MIT.EDU:1635:m.cs.uiuc.edu:8400205:000:653
Nf-From: m.cs.uiuc.edu!gillies    Dec 16 02:52:00 1989


Why didn't Xerox make a killing?  The quick answer is: They based all
their software technology on a Xerox custom bit-sliced microprogrammed
virtual-memory workstation called the Wildflower.  That computer was
at least as innovative as the software itself.

Unfortunately, no other computer in the world would run the software,
which was not easily portable (how many PC's today run VM?  Do you
know how long it takes to rewrite a compiler for a language as
complicated as ADA?)  and when Xerox finally unveiled the commercial
product it was the best $15,000 networked-word processer the world had
ever seen.

Network?  What's a network?  This was 1981.