[cctalk] Re: PCs in home vs businesses (70s/80s)

On Apr 27, 2024, at 10:39, Wayne S <wayne.sudol(a)hotmail.com> wrote: When you say “software drove hardware sales” do you mean complete software application systems or do you mean compilers available for the hardware so the software teams had variety in what they could program? Up to the ‘90’s, companies had big, expensive hardware and little to no canned software applications so companies also had relatively cheaper software developers to make custom programs. Sent from my iPhone > On Apr 27, 2024, at 10:23, Tarek Hoteit via cctalk <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> wrote: > > I came across this paragraph from the July 1981 Popular Science magazine edition in the article titled “Compute power - pro models at almost home-unit prices.” > > “ ‘Personal-computer buffs may buy a machine, bring it home, and then spend the rest of their time looking for things it can do’, said …. ‘In business, it’s the other way around. Here you know the job, you have to find a machine that will do it. More precisely, you have to find software that will do the job. Finding a computer to use the software you’ve selected becomes secondary.”. > > Do you guys* think that software drove hardware sales rather than the other way around for businesses in the early days? I recall that computer hardware salespeople would be knocking on businesses office doors rather than software salesmen. Just seeking your opinion now that we are far ahead from 1981. > > (*I do wish we have female gender engaged in the classic computing discussions threads as well. Maybe there is.) > > Regards, > Tarek Hoteit > AI Consultant, PhD > +1 360-838-3675 >