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Re: Seeking reverse-engineers - Apple II VisiCalc

Raymond Wiker wrote:

nem <nem@nospam> writes:


"Michael J. Mahon" <mjmahon@aol.com> wrote in news:


So the market for personal computers was primed long before
computers could be bought for under several thousand dollars.
And yet, there was the (in)famous statement by an IBM executive around 1970 that went something like "I think there's a home market for about five computers." 

	That is commonly attributed to IBM's Thomas J. Watson, who
thought the worldwide market for computers would be... 5. Not
restricted to home computers, because he supposedly said this in 1943
- about 30 years before the first real home computers appeared (real,
as in "not requiring a soldering iron, or a second mortgage" :-) Note
that 1943 was also before the first general-purpose digital computer
(ENIAC, 1946).

	On the other hand, Ken Olsen (of Digital Equipment Corp),
said, in 1977, "there is no reason for any individual to have a
computer in his home". That sounds like a very dumb think to say in
1977, and he meant something different from what most people think.


Yes, he was arguing for the "thin client" approach to computing, where
all the programs and data are kept on a (timeshared) central server.
Reminds one a little of today's "cloud computing" doesn't it?  ;-)

There is a never-ending competition between the "thin client" and "fat
client" approaches, and a dynamic equilibrium at any particular time.

I still appreciate "unplugged" computing, so I like my "fat clients"
(even though some are ridiculously "thin" by today's standards ;-).

At the same time, I'd be completely unwilling to give up the Internet,
so I very much appreciate "fat servers".

With 1TB hard disks under $100, there isn't much motivation for thinning
down too much.  ;-)

-michael

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