It doesn't really need this much explanation.

People take these quotes out of context all the time. Said in a business context, there was no need, at that time, for someone to have a personal computer.

There's no business justification in 1977 for a personal computer department at a business. It's similar to the gates quote about RAM (I think it was 64KB?).

These statements aren't meant to be forever quotes. Their business plan quotes.

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michaelcampbell 2 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> It's similar to the gates quote about RAM (I think it was 64KB?)

640, and Bill Gates said he either never said that, or at least never remembered having said it. I think there is no evidence anywhere that he did.

https://www.computerworld.com/article/1563853/the-640k-quote...

	▲	Shorel 14 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		That exact quote? No, never. He said something like: current computers at the time had 64kb of RAM, so the OS was designed with a limit of 640kb, and he believed this would give them 10 years of future proofing. As it happened, that limit was reached much faster, in about 6 years.

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glimshe 3 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Or maybe he simply made a mistake. Big deal. This doesn't speak negatively of his other achievements.

	▲	shermantanktop 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		He had a long career and presumably many successes, and is fallible like the rest of us. But a half-remembered zinger with no context makes for zippier posts I guess. The early popularity of Minitel, the continued popularity of ssh/tmux, and the web browser itself indicates that bespoke client applications are not the only way. He wasn’t directionally wrong.