Hacker News Reader

Comment by edejong | Hacker News Reader

Bit late to the game. Only when the company is in existential crisis it knows how to act. First step: restore trust with potential customers after gambling it all away with dirty sales tactics.

View on HN

IBM is always an interesting company. They seem to get dragged kicking and screaming into the next paradigm shift every 10 years or so, but they do still seem to manage to actually _make_ the pivot and stay somewhat relevant.

They're never a leader, but their staying power is impressive.

The chewed-gum-stuck-on-your-foot of tech hardware companies.

And their businesses can generate revenue for decades after they’re obsolete. I pay $30+ for OEM IBM typewriter ribbons.

Are they actually required for your business or just for a hobby? If for a business, I'm curious what kind of business still relies on those.

For me it’s just a hobby but plenty of businesses still use typewriters. Any time there is a international bureaucratic process like “Affidavit of intellectual property for imported electronics” when shipping between two countries that don’t have huge shipping volumes (say Ecuador to Senegal or whatever) you will see the typewriters come out because bureaucrats often only trust the true rubber stamped copies.

The IBM typewriters are rock solid enough that they’ll be a supply for the next several decades. There are mothballed Selecteics in attics that for $2-300 can be made good as new.

I don't understand. They type important legal documents on typewriters? Why can't they rubber stamp a printed one, and what do the shipping volumes have to do with it?

Let’s say you have a affidavit from your Ecuadorian supplier saying that the goods do not contain lead. It’s then rubber stamped by the Ecuadorian government office that does this. The Senegalese customs official says “this needs to be notarized and attested by the CEO of the supplier.” So now you have an official document that took months of work and lots of bribes to Get. You just take this document as is to get attested and notarized. So the CEO types his attestation on the typewriter and signs it and the notary applies their seal.

Large countries like the US, EU, China have solved this with automated processes but the smaller countries havent.

> There are mothballed Selecteics in attics that for $2-300 can be made good as new.

Wow! I need to get one now...

Wow I don't know they still sell the ribbons...

There’s actually a very thriving market for ribbons, especially generic half inch ribbons for manual typewriters. It’s a very low capital business.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com