11 Aug
1997
11 Aug
'97
9:23 a.m.
On Mon, 11 Aug 1997, Marvin wrote:
I just read the book "Accidental Empires" by
Robert X. Cringely that was the
basis for the PBS movie, "Triumph of the Nerds."
Sam Ismail wrote:
I'll add that I thought the book to be extremely
entertaining and a great
read. I'll comment on the fact that not much mention was made of CP/M in
that history seldom celebrates the losers.
I just recently saw "Triumph of the Nerds" (playing a lot lately on a PBS
station near you, no doubt) and was fascinated by the view of history
presented in it. Basically, if it did not involve Apple, Microsoft, or
IBM, it wasn't history; they only started talking about CP/M when it got
to the "and IBM needed an operating system" part of the story.
One curious bit. The statement that Apple had 50% of the PC market share
when IBM came out with its PC stuck in my mind. Going through my pile of
old BYTE magazines, I found a BYTE from that era (well, 1984 actually; which
is actually a match for era because they were building up the Macintosh
story) which gives 50% of the market share to Tandy...
Roger "cut my teeth on a TRS-80 Model I" Ivie
ivie(a)cc.usu.edu