Thank the fate for PC to exist!

Open nature of PC allowed for truly free/open source software to exist which can be functional without big corporate lockdown. I can fully assemble it with parts I can buy individually and as long as they are compatible (which is mentioned on the box, no hidden knowledge here) I can expect it to work within the mentioned warranty.

My PC based computers can be booted and fully functional with Debain, Fedora and (put your favorite Linux, BSD distro here mine is openSUSE Tumbleweed). There is no parallel ecosystem which yet, which rivals PC in terms of open specs and fully tinkerable hardware and software.

Macbooks are locked down with Apple and forget about your own hardware.

Android seemed like a competitor, but closed nature of its development and lack commodity hardware around ARM based phones means that FOSS layer exists only in user bases apps. We have custom ROMs which require bootable blobs from vendors and its non-reliable and breaks often.

It's common for people to assume that if IBM didn't use a simple, open architecture with off-the-shelf components for the original PC, then we'd never have had the PC ecosystem as we know it.

But this view neglects the fact that an organic ecosystem of interoperable open hardware converging to de facto standards and running a common OS already existed prior to IBM designing their PC. By 1980, there were already many independent vendors implementing their own variation on the 8080/S-100 design pioneered by MITS, all running CP/M from Digital Research.

When IBM released the PC, the CP/M world was still going strong. The fact that it was an easily cloneable architecture based on the 16-bit 8086 caused a lot of disruption, and led to the market dynamics that were already present in the 8080-S100-CP/M world pivoting over to x86-ISA-DOS.

If IBM had kept their PC proprietary, it might have led to a bit more fragmentation in the short-term market for business microcomputing, but at the same time, the CP/M world would have continued on without that disruption, and something else would have ultimately catalyzed the move to a common 16-bit architecture. DR was already working on CP/M-86 at the time IBM was developing the PC, after all.

Eventually, the same forces that led to the collapse of vertically integrated, proprietary platforms and the dominance of open-standards system builders would have asserted themselves, and IBM itself would still have been subdued by them. Modern computing would likely be in a similar position with or without IBM. The PC was a major ripple, but didn't really change the current.

You are right. We are lucky. A company like Digital could have made the PDP-11 into 'the PC' and lock it down from the beginning. IBM could have done the same if they had not been so incompetent. In such a case you would have Intel, IBM and Microsoft being a single organization that would have become to powerful.

We still had plenty of issue with Intel and Microsoft being able to play out their monopoly.

So I think it could have been a lot worse, but it could also have been a lot better.

> Macbooks are locked down with Apple and forget about your own hardware.

Not completely. Asahi linux boots on bare metal and runs great on Apple silicon machines prior to the M3.

Just wait for the PC ARM to take off as the anti-x86 keeps cheerleading, how open do you think it will remain?

Yea but we're stuck with the same horrible keybindings that stopped making sense before the 90s hit

ironically, you should be thanking Apple that the IBM PC exists

The Apple II was an open system and IBM clearly took a lot of inspiration from the Apple II line. Look at the 5150 motherboard in the picture in the article and compare it to the motherboard from an Apple II+