[NTLK] short history [was: C64 on app store?]

[James Fraser]

Hello,

--- On Tue, 9/21/10, M. Horvat <redjazz_slo at yahoo.com> wrote:

> Normally I'd say that limitations enhance creativity, but
> what is too much is simply too much.

People who write software and build hardware are always going to be faced with limitations, sure.  It's just that the time they spend trying to comply with -artificial- restraints on their creativity (e.g. middle managers) means that much less time can be spent attempting to overcome the -technical- challenges they invariably face.
 
>I'd like to know what made IBM "so evil" in the 1980s. 

It wasn't necessarily a matter of IBM being evil.  What I was trying to get at with my analogy is that the IBM of 1980 was an enormous, inflexible organization that was used to doing things a certain way (i.e. they had a lot of rules, starting with their dress code and working on up).  As such, IBM had a terrible time coping when it became necessary to change direction and do things differently from the way that they had known.  Your teachers in school may have suffered from this very same problem, and it's a common affliction of people who become more fond of rules for their own sake than they are fond of logic (and actually getting things done).

Imagine a one-on-one basketball game between a massive bodybuilder and a skinny teenager.  When I say "massive bodybuilder," I'm talking about one of those guys you see on the cover of a muscle magazine.  You know, the guy who is so buff, you can almost -feel- the muscular tension in every single part of his body, up to and including his head, which, if the strings of muscle standing out in his neck are any indication, will be exploding off of his neck shortly.

While the bodybuilder is busy still trying to lace up his sneakers, the skinny kid is already out on the court shooting practice hoops; it's not hard to guess who is more likely to win the game.  The skinny kid has a lot less mass to move around than the bodybuilding does, so he's less likely to tire out quickly.  Likewise, moving a 120-pound body around can be done with greater agility and speed than moving around a 270-pound one can.  Bodybuilders are typically known a lot more for their ability to lift heavy weights and a lot less for their speed in the hundred-yard dash.  

Well, at one time, IBM had much more in common with the bodybuilder in that basketball game than they did with the skinny kid.  IBM was big, ungainly, and while it was a very -strong- company, it was not a very agile one.  Of course, they didn't have to be agile at the time.  IBM was used to selling enormous computers that their customers typically leased (not bought) and if you wanted something done to your machine, -you- didn't do it: IBM sent out a field engineer and they did it for you.  It was a great system, (for IBM, at least) and they made a lot of money doing things that way.  For a while.

Along came the microcomputer.  What IBM had needed a portion of a room to do, (albeit an ever-decreasing portion) the microcomputer could do within the space of a desktop.  IBM took a look at what Apple was doing and how they did it, then decided that they, too, wanted a piece of that very lucrative pie.   IBM being very strong, (i.e. having enormous quantities of cash) they were able to break into the microcomputer market.

While the IBM PC was a success, it was a success in -spite- of, not because of, IBM's musclebound corporate culture.  The development process for the PC was very different from IBM's usual product development.  However, once the PC was released, IBM's old corporate culture reared its ugly head again, IBM promptly forgot that they no longer ran the computing world, and the IBM clone manufacturers drank IBM's milkshake.  

IBM thought that they could charge pretty much what they wanted to, same as the good old days, only things didn't work that way any longer.  By the time IBM figured the -new- way of doing things out, and changed their rulebook, most people already had a PC clone sitting on their desk.

Apple Computer started up as two guys working out of a garage.  How quickly can two guys make decisions and implement those decisions?  Very quickly.  Likewise, a small company doesn't have much time to sit around writing pages and pages of rules.  If a company becomes too fixated on rules, (i.e. the process of producing the product rather than the product itself) a competitor who is -less- fixated on rules is going to be able to write their software or build their hardware faster.

Granted, the claim can be made that Apple's release of these rules will make it possible for developers to build higher quality software.  That's true, to some extent.  However, that doesn't alter the fact that developers cannot read rules and write software simultaneously.  The more rules developers have to look over, understand, and incorporate into their software, the longer that software will take to write.  Most people prefer software they can actually run on their machines (bugs and all) rather than software that is still mired in the development process.

Anyway, I apologize for forgetting just how cosmopolitan the list is.  With any luck, my IBM/Apple analogy makes more sense now.  If not, you can always print this email out and use it as a soporific (sleep aid) for those nights when you just can't get to sleep.  So there's always that. ¬_¬

>I'm not from the USA, and I didn't even exist back then) Was Apple simply >jealous of the IBM PC's success after the failure of the Apple /// and >Lisa?

Your mention of the Apple /// and the Lisa makes me smile.  :)

In both of those cases, it seemed as though Apple took a page from IBM's old playbook.  They developed machines that had a metric diaperload of specs (the Apple ///) and a -huge- price tag, (the Lisa) only to learn that, no, you can't always charge whatever you happen to feel like charging for a machine and still have it be a success (a lesson Steve Jobs had to learn all over again with NeXT). 

IOW: Apple tried to act like IBM once did and it backfired horribly.

Luckily, Apple had enough of a cash cow in the Apple II that they could keep going until they were able to develop another cash cow: the Macintosh.


Best,

James Fraser