Re: The apple 2, the PC, and the clones

[supertimer@aol.com (Supertimer)]

Bruce.Baker@juge.com (Bruce Baker) wrote:

>The Laser was legal, others were not.  It took a lot of legal fighting to work
>it out.  It was not clear what the standard was.  After the legal fighting
>cleared it was established that one had to make a computer with using Apple's
>code.  One had to get a computer to do the same thing by different means. 
This
>was not impossible but by the time things got established the peak of Apple II
>had passed. 
>
>PC architecture is more open.  IBM did not create the standard really. 
Others,
>several other companies contributed.  Besides IBM did not fight for the right
>be exclusive.  This was not their only product, or even their most important
>product.  Never has been.  IBM was adding machines, typewriters, then
>mainframes and aftermarket for big companies.  Their attempt to be exclusive
>the PC-Jr failed badly, in similar ways to the Apple III.

If by "open" you meant off the shelf components, I agree.  If by "open" you
mean expandability, I disagree as the Apple II was just as expandable as
the IBM PC.  In fact, one of the criteria for the design of the IBM PC was
that it had slots "just like the Apple II" (not technically just like but just
like
in that they existed...of course they weren't compatible).

IBM did fight for the right to be exclusive.  They fought the compatibles
hard but lost.  Because the PC used many off the shelf components, all
that really locked it to them was the BIOS.  Even the OS, PC-DOS, was
bought from Microsoft who had previously negotiated the right to sell it
under the name MS-DOS to other manufacturers.  Of course there WERE
NO other manufacturers at the time so IBM agreed to this one demand.

When compatible BIOSes were made that were "cleanroom" engineered
and ruled legal and with Microsoft providing the OS, IBM could not stop
the compatibles.

I'm not saying the compatibles were bad for IBM.  Far from it.  IBM sells
a lot more PCs today than they ever did when they were exlusive.  But
if IBM had bought PC-DOS from Microsoft exclusively, things might have
been a lot different.  With the BIOS and the OS both under its control,
IBM could have countered any compatible BIOS by altering the OS to
only work with their BIOS.

In fact, during the Pentium I era, Intel corp. did just that.  They altered
their BIOS to freeze when it detected any non-Intel CPU.  That's why
if you wanted to upgrade certain Intel boards to faster AMD CPUs you
have to replace the BIOS with one from Award.