On 01-01-98, KEITH KNAPP declared to DAVID HARTUNG:
KK>That's probably part of it, but I think a more important part is
KK>that when IBM entered the micro market, it became the instant
KK>standard, in spite of the fact that neither the hardware nor the
KK>OS were really anything special.
The PC's popularity was due the approach taken by that little group of
mavericks at IBM that designed it and put it out in a way contrary to
normal IBM policy and contrary to what the rest of the computer world
was doing at the time.  They gave it an open architecture and told
everybody how it worked and how to access stuff in it.  What they made
public, every other computer company considered proprietary and kept to
themselves, attempting to force their customers to come only to them for
expansion and software.  Texas Instruments' computers died out because
of that kind of mindset, and Apple never did quite get it thru their
heads either.
IBM quickly became the standard because of the 3rd party vendors and the
clone makers it created with that open architecture.
In point of fact, similar is also true of Microsoft's DOS and Windoze.
In both cases, internal details were made public, permitting 3rd party
software development to flourish, which in turn supported the platform
itself.
Bob     /\-/\   - proud Ilk   homebody@galstar.com
C.A.T. ( o o ) Chapter Ilks
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Green Country - Oklahoma      http://www.galstar.com/~homebody/
 * SLMR 2.1a * God help me ... I do love it so. - Patton on War
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