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It's quite impressive that Radio Shack have kept going as long as they have. Here's the Onion's take

http://www.theonion.com/articles/even-ceo-cant-figure-out-ho...

In the context of 1985, Radio Shack was a different story. In most towns, it was the closest thing people had to a computer store. There was no Best Buy, there was no way to order $3 cables from Monoprice via China.

When you needed an RS-232 cable or a box of floppy discs, sometimes Radio Shack was all you had.

not only was RadioShack the only computer store in town, but they also helped open up the IBM platform by selling the Tandy computer (produced by their parent company, Tandy). Prior to that they created and sold the TRS-80.

It's easy to toss rocks at them today. But it's hard to understate their importance to the early PC industry.

Ultimately Jobs was right. This sort of hobbyist market wasn't going to last (and RadioShack has completely missed the boat on the 3d printing and "maker" movements). We don't have smartphones with BASIC installed. Computer makers don't even care about that aspect of their devices (that is, that they are programmable). Things have changed quite dramatically.

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