Replying to a message of Dave Drum to Bob Ackley:

 DD> -=> Bob Ackley wrote to Ross Cassell <=-

 RC>> It is because of their arrogance as to why their platform doesnt have
 RC>> the marketshare that PC's have. Had they used the IBMPC
 RC>> compatibility model, you would have had a well balanced computer
 RC>> marketplace and Microsoft itself would be more humble. Lets face it
 RC>> the Apple Operating System is incredibly stable and can do more with
 RC>> lesser hardware.

 DD> Not necessarily "lesser" hardware. Different hardware/architecture.
 DD> But Ross is right about the arrogance of Apple and its advocates.

 BA>> IBM went with open architecture on the PC for a number of reasons,
 BA>> gaining market share over the existing S-100 bus among them but
 BA>> primarily because of its consent agreement with the government over
 BA>> its antitrust case.  That's also the reason IBM hired M$ to provide
 BA>> the OS rather than developing one in- house, the government wasn't
 BA>> about to allow IBM to own the PC market as it did the rest of the
 BA>> computer market.  When IBM tried to recapture and control the PC
 BA>> market with a proprietary system (the PS/2), it flopped even though
 BA>> it was superior to anything else on the market at the time..

 DD> According to a former housemate who was a field engineer for the Itty
 DD> Bitty Machine company the top brass thought that they might sell as
 DD> many as 100,000 PCs over a period of about 10 years.   Bv)=

Actually I remember seeing a small ad in Byte for S-100 adapter cards made by
a company named "itty bitty machines," no capital letters.  IBM
forced them to
change their name or ran them out of business, this long before IBM entered the
microcomputer market.

--- FleetStreet 1.19+