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 IIhad 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. Bruce
Bruce, there is a lot in you post that is just plain wrong.The Laser was legal, yes, but so was the Franklin 500 and 2000 series. There were other clones that were legal, but just not very good, or very successful.
The standard was perfectly clear. The standard was Apple's II. If your clone couldn't run every piece of II software, then it was slightly "off" from the standard. Even Apple used this measure, when they introduced new models of the II by saying what % of II software would run on the new model.
PC architecture is NOT more open. It was slightly less open in that you had to pay extra to get what came with the II and IIPlus - hardware schematics and monitor disassembly. Both machines were created with off the shelf components and only the firmware and how the components were used was the result of the design teams.
IBM did create the standard. The PC standard that is. Who created the BIOS? Who chose the number of pins on the original ISA slot? (And it was ISA, only because it was in IBM's PC) Who chose the 8088? And the 4.77 mhz? EVERYTHING about the PC was IBM's decision, including the OS that they chose to call PC-DOS. They didn't create each chip, they didn't create the OS, but they created the standard.
IBM chose to follow the II model for two reasons: 1) The openness of the II allowed for third party hard/software, and that was the way to achieve market success without doing all the R&D yourself; 2) IBM never expected the PC to become what it did by 1984, let alone what it is today. They saw it as a way to make a quick few hundred million dollars, in what was probably a short "fad."
The Junior was not IBM's effort to be "exclusive." The Junior was IBM's effort to conqueror the home market. Yes, it failed, badly, because, of the first keyboard, because of the lack of a second disk drive, because even the 128K model didn't have enough memory (16K was stolen for the video memory, so Lotus' 123 couldn't run until they created a cartridge version that used both slots), because the drives were too slow (no DMA), and the machine was too high priced.
IBM's effort to recapture control of the market it created, it's efforts at being "exclusive" was the PS/2 line, with the microchannel. Even that might have had success, if IBM hadn't gotten greedy, and demanded that those who licensed microchannel had to pay royalties for every ISA machine they had ever sold. That's when Compaq et al created EISA.
Finally, the /// failed for radically different reasons than the Junior. The failure of the /// was clearly a lack of confidence because of the many hardware problems that early ///s had. Apple eventually got them fixed, but it was too late by then. When they released the ///+ they had a fine machine, but it was released three years too late. Coleco had a similar problem with the ADAM. The engineers weren't done yet, but marketing pushed it out the door. Coleco lost millions taking back dysfunctional machines. Neither hardware nor software was "ready for prime time", and, by the time all were fixed and working properly, the machine was an onion, not an orchid in the market.
Roy