[geeks] retro magazine fun (SysAdmin)

[Mike Meredith]

On Wed, 17 Nov 2004 09:06:35 +0200 (IST), Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
> What made the IBM PC successfull is that it turned microcomputers from
> a "geeks toy" into a commomdity. 

Even today, you can regard most computers with the exception of
thin clients as "geek toys". How many normal people want to be their own
system administrator ? How many normal people know how or why to
defragment a disk ?

I think that IBM was successful with the original PC for a number of
reasons ... yes it was a commodity, but it also had the IBM name behind
it, and it was a pretty good machine for the time. We like to point out
all the weaknesses of the PC, but IBM didn't design it for a long life,
and despite the weaknesses it compares well with systems of a similar
age.

> You could go into a computer store
> and walk out with a working system.

As you could with an Apple II, a Commodore PET, a Kaypro, an Osbourne,
and any number of other CP/M machines. 

> Apple never achieved that with the Apple II, probably because all the

It's easy to overlook the fact that Apple was *very* successful with the
Apple II just because IBM was so much more successful with the PC.

> But the real success of the PC was not until it was cloned. Then you
> could buy a cheap clone for half of the price of an IBM or a
> compatible and still run the same applications. This expanded the
> market for hardware add-ons and software, which expanded the market
> for IBM PC's, which expanded......

If you replaced all the IBM/PC in the above paragraph with Apple II it
would still pretty much be accurate. In fact I'd say IBM took more than
a few ideas from the AppleII.