On Thu, Jun 30, 2016 at 3:21 PM, Clem Cole wrote: > > On Thu, Jun 30, 2016 at 2:31 PM, Dan Cross wrote: >> >> ​...​ >> why didn't they have a more capable kernel than MS-DOS? >> > ​I don't think they cared. or felt it was needed at the time (I disagreed > then and still do). > Yeah...I guess you are right. Surely a motivated team could have produced a floppy-only system capable of >> running multiple processes, etc. It wouldn't be Unix, it wouldn't even >> necessarily be a clone of Unix, but it could have been something better >> than MS-DOS. >> > ​As Marc pointed out. The PC was fabulously successful for what it was > designed to be. They wanted something the run VisiCalc and later a word > processor for corporate America. We are programmers saw it >>could<< have > been more capable, but they did not really care. The system way, way > out did what it was planned. So it's hard to tell folks that did > something bad. > > ​... ​ >> I'm not sure I would assert that their success was due to good technical >> decisions; >> > ​exactly.​ > > > >> ​... >> The IBM brand added de facto legitimacy to the personal computer in the >> workplace at a critical time when it was just starting to make inroads into >> business: surely their success had a lot more to do with that than choosing >> to use the 8088 and DOS? >> > ​Indeed.​ > > Although I think a side story is that you did not mention is that IBM > allowed the system to be cloned. Remember at this same time, Apple out > Franklin computer out of business for cloning the Apple II. Because the > PC became a standard of sort, because their were choices in getting lower > cost systems, not just buying from IBM. That ended top cementing it, > That's an excellent point. The VHS vs. Betamax argument may apply here. >> > ​Maybe - I think of it in terms of economics.​ PCs and DOS > "won" because they were cheaper than any other solution to the a similar > task and it was good enough, > I suspect that, at the end of the day, this is the real reason for the success of the PC. It's easy, as an engineer, to second-guess it and ask why it couldn't have been "more" than it was, but I suspect a business person would look at me funny. From a business perspective, it was wildly successful (until the clone market undercut IBM so much they got out of the PC business altogether). In economics vs technology, economics almost always wins. - Dan C. Like VHS/Betamax it was good enough for many, many people - so economics > drove the standard. But also at the time, Apple, who had a better product > and actually was more polished than MS-DOS was, was >>perceived<< as being > for home use and DOS for business. IBM and MSFT and Intel did a great job > of convincing people of that idea. Add to it that it was cheaper, it was > a hard order to get businesses to consider Macs. > > Which is different from Betamax.... business (TV stations/professionals > et al) picked the "better" system. But they did not here, they picked > the cheap one no matter what. > > Clem > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: