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Re: (OT) The giant steps down before the crash
de Caesar Romano 06/16/2006 05:35
On Fri, 16 Jun 2006 14:33:40 +0100, hummingbird
<OPRBMDQMZNLV@spammotel.com> wrote Re Re: (OT) The giant steps down
before the crash:
>Having spent my career working for IBM, for some time in Entry Systems
>Product Management in Europe HQ, I know something about the rise of
>Microsoft. In those days the major problem we had was with MS-DOS,
>sloppily written and with many bugs and limitations.
>Gates was never highly thought of inside IBM, often described as an
>untrustworthy cowboy and clearly struggled to step up to the role of
>dealing with the prof IBM Corporation. Tensions grew from very early
>days and continued when Gates developed Windows. The rest is history.
>
>There are many variations of the debates which went on between
>IBM and Gates in the early days, few of them very accurate.
>I knew some of those in Boca Raton who were personally involved.
>
>IBM's biggest single problem with the intro of the PC was that too
>many of those in control at corp level only ever wanted it to be an
>intelligent terminal with v/limited computing capacity, to protect the
>huge revenues of existing product lines and in fairness, few knew much
>about the technological developments which would occur allowing PC
>performace to rise. IBM's open architecture PC family 1 series was
>intended to create and expand the global PC market under IBM control.
>PC/2 was intended to regain control after it had been lost and MCA
>was all about that, despite it being marketed as something different.
>
>Again, the rest is history.
Yes, the book (Big Blues) describes what you speak of above. It also
describes how once the PC and PC/AT became wildly successful that the
big product managers at IBM who at first didn't want anything to do
with Boca Raton, suddenly be began fighting over getting a piece of
the action and in doing so destroyed the original development group.
True?
BTW, IMO the PC/2 and the MCA were the death knell for the IBM PC
business. I was managing a small computer group at the time MCA was
introduced and after looking at the specs, we all decided that we
would never buy it for the group. I guess a lot of others felt the
same way.
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