| ▲ | pjmlp 3 days ago |
| PC only got where it was thanks to the mistakes that made clones possible. Everyone else, including other IBM offerings, were all about vertical integration. It is no coincidence that nowadays with PC desktops being largely left to enthusiastics and gamers, OEMs are all doubling down on vertical integration across laptops and mobile devices, as means to recoup the thin margins that have come to be. |
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| ▲ | thw_9a83c 3 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| The original IBM PC was proprietary only in its BIOS. It was a mistake IBM regretted very soon and tried to fix with an PS/2 architecture, MCA bus, and even OS/2 operating system. But Microsoft and the companies that made PC clones did everything to keep this "mistake" alive. In fact, the openness of the PC platform is a historical accident. Other proprietary personal computer manufacturers (like Apple, Commodore and Atari) also never planned to create an open platform either. The closest thing was the 8-bit MSX platform, which was a Microsoft thing for the Japanese market, and it was very soon outdated. |
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| ▲ | HarHarVeryFunny 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Other than using COTS parts (incl. the CPU), the BIOS, while proprietary, was in a way the weakest link as far as cloning, since it established a ROM-based standardized hardware interface that isolated the OS from the hardware. Companies like Compaq, and later Phoenix and AMI, were able to get around the proprietary nature of the BIOS by building clean-room BIOS clones that withstood IBM's legal challenges. However, given the willingness of Microsoft (apparently with little IBM could do about it) to sell MS-DOS variants to others like Compaq, and later the emergence of MS-DOS clones like DR-DOS, it's not obvious that clones might not still have taken off without the unintentional assist of the standardized BIOS interface. | | |
| ▲ | thw_9a83c 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | I wouldn't say the BIOS was the weakest link. It was really the only obstacle, albeit a weak one. Surely, the BIOS was clean-room reverse engineered very soon and after that, the PC-clone market just exploded. However, if there were no BIOS, the thin hardware abstraction layer that the BIOS provided would be part of MS-DOS. I see only two historical alternatives from that: 1. Microsoft would have had an even greater upper hand in controlling the PC market. 2. IBM could have kept the BIOS proprietary (even though as a part of MS DOS), which prevented Microsoft from selling MS-DOS independently with an IBM PC abstraction layer. However, even if option 2 prevailed, Microsoft could have created its own BIOS to ensure that software written for MS-DOS would be compatible across the PC clone market. | |
| ▲ | NetMageSCW 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | There’s a lot, lot more to a PC being standard than the BIOS API. Attempts like the Tandy 2000 showed that hardware that deviated too much couldn’t run the same software and failed. | | |
| ▲ | musicale 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Amazing that Tandy managed to turn success into failure twice in the PC market. |
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| ▲ | musicale 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | > standardized hardware interface that isolated the OS from the hardware Exactly the point of having a BIOS. CP/M had one as well. | | |
| ▲ | HarHarVeryFunny 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Of course, but it confers the same advantage to the clone maker that it did to IBM, which is why it might be regarded as a weakness in terms of preventing clones (although I've no idea if that was something that IBM was anticipating). |
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| ▲ | musicale 2 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > mistakes that made clones possible You mean like publishing the system board schematics and a full source listing for the BIOS? That seems to have been surprisingly normal for PCs in the late 1970s. Apple also published schematics and listings, and had to deal with clones, but Apple 2 clones weren't particularly useful without a copy of (or compatible replacement for) Apple's ROM, which Apple did not license. |
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| ▲ | pjmlp 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Protected under copyright law, and not allowed for cloning just because. I am 70's child, kind of aware how common it used to be during those days. |
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| ▲ | keyringlight 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I think the big change over the past 17 years has been the app stores (and on the less 'personal' computer side businesses will be on support contracts), the from the manufacturers point of view hardware and software is a loss leader to try and funnel users to where they do as much computer related commerce through their middle-man. In some ways it's an evolution of bundling software where that would be another source of income. |
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| ▲ | pjmlp 3 days ago | parent [-] | | That is certainly part of it. | | |
| ▲ | thw_9a83c 3 days ago | parent [-] | | > I think the big change over the past 17 years has been the app stores And also cloud applications, which are useless without the harder-to-clone data center part. |
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| ▲ | panick21_ 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I do not think that is true. Lets remember that still in 1990 IBM alone was about 50% of the whole market. Even without clones IBM PC would have won. Had IBM made clones impossible they could likely have captured far more of the market. It certainly wasn't IBM ability to produce PC that prevented them selling more. Likely eventually they would have licensed the architecture to AT&T and the like. Vertical integration could have worked, we are just lucky it didn't. |
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| ▲ | pjmlp 2 days ago | parent [-] | | In what bubble? In 1990, everyone on my higschool that had access to computers was distributed between Spectrum, Atari ST, Amiga, and PCs, with PCs being the minority. Personally I only moved into PCs in 1991, with a 386SX. Until then, I only used the PC1512 ones on the school lab. I became part of the PC minority. | | |
| ▲ | NetMageSCW 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | The one outside your bubble. In the business world where sales occurred, IBM had a huge advantage. | | |
| ▲ | pjmlp 2 days ago | parent [-] | | In which country, again? Because in Iberian Penisula, it was full of green phosphor terminals into timesharing systems, and random 16 bit computers from all brands on the more creative side. In 1990 it wasn't certain that PC would really take over, everyone was mostly on MS-DOS, and not everyone was still buying into Windows, which only got 3.0 released in the middle of the year and demanded too expensive hardware for most business. | | |
| ▲ | panick21_ 2 days ago | parent | next [-] | | That might be your perception but its far from reality. And the reality is what happens in Spain isn't really all that relevant. Globally speaking anything not PC was a rounding error. Even if you take all DEC Terminals sold in the 80s, you only get a fraction of the early sales of the PC by the 1990s. Of course timeshare systems had a huge history and install base, and the same for terminals, but by the late 80s PC sales dwarfed it by ridiculous numbers. Europe generally is more delayed and more fragmented, but the economics of the situation was totally clear and are driven by US home and business demand. | |
| ▲ | anthk 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Ditto in Spain. Until 1996 or so I didn't see WIndows 95 installs. From 1997 they were everywhere. | | |
| ▲ | cmrdporcupine 2 days ago | parent [-] | | Grey-box PC hardware and PCs in general plummeted in price in the early-mid-90s, making them feasible for consumers where they weren't before. Doesn't change the fact that on a worldwide basis IBM PC and clones-of sales were through the roof for business customers from about 84 or so on. Not a bubble at all. There was a period where offices and schools etc would have more heterogenous systems -- especially schools where Apple offered incredibly aggressive educational discounts, and so you'd find a lot of Apple IIs and even the odd Macintosh. But this ended here in Canada at least by about 88, 89. From then on you'd find offices with PCs running DOS -- sometimes Windows -- often running Novel, and using boring business applications like Lotus, WordPerfect or Word, etc. By the time I was in high school in 90, 91, everything was PC. So much so that I ended up ditching my well-loved Atari ST and getting a 486 myself, because the writing was on the wall and the party was over for 68k machines. | | |
| ▲ | anthk a day ago | parent [-] | | In the Spain in the 80's maybe the a bit-loaded neighbour (or families with older brothers and no duties) had a ZX Spectrum and that's it. IBM PC's were for big companies, corporations, banks and such. They were very expensive, maybe the same cost of a small car. Later, in early 90's, yes, lawyers and small companies got DOS PC's once they became cheap enough. Macs in Spain were for people from the Humanities branch. Journalists, editors, writers, media creators, graphic designers, audio producers... |
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| ▲ | panick21_ 2 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Feel free to look at the data. Yes, in Europe Amiga and ST had ok sales, specially at home and mostly for games. But they had almost non in the US, the biggest market, and same in Japan. https://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/archive/artic... By 1990 everything other then PC is a rounding error. Before that some 8-bit systems were relevant. |
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