Comment by blihp | Hacker News Reader

Comment by blihp | Hacker News Reader

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No, I would include IBM high on the list. IBM did a half-assed PC design to rush something to market[1] after being late to PCs which was a significant factor in why they lost control of the PC market a handful of years after entering it.[2] They actually had a few shots at a comeback (the Thinkpad was a great laptop etc.) but didn't like margins and decided to become a services business instead[3]... how's that working out?

[1] They decided the OS wasn't that important... sure, let Microsoft own that. The CPU architecture wasn't that important... sure, let Intel own that. Just glue a bunch of off-the-shelf logic together for the rest. After all, the real value is in the IBM logo on the box. What could possibly go wrong?

[2] Sure, they were calling the shots for the 8086 and (mostly) 80286 generations. They tried to rectify their mistake over half a decade later with the PS/2 (i.e. proprietary everything) but by then it was too late. Compaq and the clone makers owned the market from the 80386 on.

[3] Out of the frying pan and into the fire?

I think this analysis is truthy, as opposed to true.

> did a half-assed PC design to rush something to market

the alternative to "half-assed" and "off the shelf" would have been "an IBM-wide committee taking 5 years to do an all-IBM device that cost $30,000." They "rushed it out" because the market was moving fast and a ponderous bureaucracy would have missed it.

For a number of years, "IBM-compatible" was the buzzword in PCs. The market was simply too big for them to keep owning it. There were still good profits to be made on customers who prided themselves on being all-IBM. They could have led the army instead of being the army as they had in the mainframe days. That would have required a subtlety that just wasn't in them.

The PS/2 and OS/2 were indeed mistakes and helped make them a joke.

> the alternative to "half-assed" and "off the shelf" would have been "an IBM-wide committee taking 5 years to do an all-IBM device that cost $30,000."

Which IBM did. They built the IBM Instruments Computer System Model 9000. Came out in 1982.

A hot seller, that was. Wikipedia says:

> Reasons cited for the failure of the System 9000 were its poor performance and high price, which led to the IBM PC being used where price was of concern, and to other 32-bit microcomputers being used where performance mattered.[10] IBM closed its Instrument division in January 1987, reassigning the approximately 150 employees that had worked for it to other positions.

150 employees? they'd use that many people to give names to the broom closets.

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