17 May
2007
17 May
'07
9:24 p.m.
On 17 May 2007 at 16:54, Roger Merchberger wrote:
Cross compilers or no, installed software base or no,
the PC as a home or
personal platform wasn't popular in the slightest until the PC attained
"critical mass" in the business world and it started making sense to have a
compatible platform at home... and IMHO, that wouldn't have happened if IBM
hadn't forced all their bigger shops to migrate their desktop machines to PCs.
I'm not entirely sure I follow your line of reasoning. Certainly,
I'd need to tell the 81-year old fellow who's sent his magnum opus on
300 DSDD 5.25" diskettes for conversion this week. He generated them
not with one, but three Kaypro 2's over the years.
What there wasn't in the pre-PC world was a lot of uniformity between
manufacturers. Quite a number ran the same software base, but it
didn't do a whole lot of good when your friend was using Multitech
system and you were using an Osborne, even though you both were
running WordStar. Writing decent games across the various platforms
(which really pushed the IBM PC along in the world) was next to
impossible.
I'd guess that there were only two real "killer" apps in the x80 days-
-word processing and spreadsheets. I'm not sure that database apps
really came into their own until hard disks became readily and
cheaply available.
Yet, even after the PC made its appearance, there were still doubts.
Certainly, x80 machines still were being introduced (that Amstrad PCW
in my office comes from what, 1985?). My friends with other 8 bit
CP/M boxes were pretty slow to move to the PC, but one thing does
seem to be true--they overwhelmingly moved to the PC and not to the
Mac. WordStar on the PC was pretty much the same as WordStar on a
Z80.
Cheers,
Chuck