17 May
2007
17 May
'07
4:10 p.m.
On 17 May 2007 at 11:38, Roger Merchberger wrote:
> That's not a fair comparison, tho - a fair
comparison would be "a
simple
and straightforward way to translate 6800/6809
assembly to 68K code".
Intel certainly didn't provide a 6800->x86 translator, did they? ;-)
No, but WordStar, DBASE II, Supercalc, etc. weren't written in 6800
code, were they? Were there ever any 6800-based "killer apps"?
It would've - because the reason the PC was
successful despite it's
technological inferiority was due to it's being rammed [Microsoft Vista
Style(TM)] of every major corporation that had IBM "big iron." After they
were installed in most offices, the trickle-down effect of needing to work
at home, so you had to have a compatible machine at home.
I don't think so--after the 5100, IBM was very gun-shy about
"personal computers". Even with the PC, they were very cautious--
basically introducing an 8-bit machine long after the Kaypros and
Osbornes had demonstrated that there was a market for them.
Had IBM "invented" the Mac & MacOS and
used the same "marketing strategy,"
we wouldn't have to worry about hating Vista & Bill Gates would still only
be a millionaire.
Again, IBM being cautious instead of revolutionary. Judging by the
reactions from the IBM sales offices when the PC came out, it was
almost as if IBM was expecting it to flop. I suspect that they
thought the initial market would be people with a cassette recorder
and a TV set for input and output. Indeed, you couldn't expect to
run much more than CP/M-86 or MS-DOS on a machine with a planar
memory maxed out at 64K.
When the PC was adopted wholesale by business, I don't think they
came to terms with it very quickly (which might explain the Peanut).
I thought the Mac was interesting when it came out--but I asked the
Apple marketing guy point-blank at a trade show "You don't actually
expect me to read that little screen, do you?" My eyes are terrible
and at the outset I was using a 17" monitor on my PC. Personally, I
think Apple over-emphasized the packaging and gave up too much on
expandability. Yes, there were Radius add-on monitors for the Mac,
but they cost more than a complete PC setup. That's where Apple lost
me. "Cute" doesn't do anything for you if you can't read the screen.
Cheers,
Chuck