Subj : Re: Commodore Computers
To   : Nightfox
From : Dr. What
Date : Sun May 01 2022 11:41:22

-=> Nightfox wrote to Dr. What <=-

 DW> I think that beige was just the new standard across the industry.

 Ni> Well there were other home computers that looked different from that,
 Ni> such as the Commodore 64 (all built into a keyboard, more of a brownish
 Ni> color),

But the Commodore 64C was beige.  The Commodore 128s were all beige.

 Ni> Timex Sinclair (similarly, had the keyboard built in and they
 Ni> were silver, black, or perhaps other colors), etc.. 

Like any industry, things didn't change across the companies all at once.  Even
later, there were IBM clones with non-beige cases to set themselves apart from
the other clones.

But I think that most consumers perceived beige as something positive and any
other color would have meant more work for the marketing depts.

 Ni> I've also heard
 Ni> about the Atari 400 home computer, which was beige, but the way it
 Ni> looked, I always thought it looked more like a game machine than a
 Ni> computer (I think it ran its software from cartridges, for instance).

Ya, and as I recall, the Atari was closer to the older C64 in color (more
brown).

 Ni> I often thought there were products that were technically superior that
 Ni> suffered from poor marketing.  OS/2 was another - I thought OS/2 was a
 Ni> better OS than Windows, but IBM failed to market it well enough.

OS/2 was IBM's bungle.  Not just marketing.

An OS is useless without software to run on it.  When a new OS comes out, the
smart thing to do would have been to make it very cheap for developers (who
commit to making an app for the OS) to get the developer tools - preferably
before the OS actually makes it to the stores.

OS/2's first issue was hardware.  You needed a much beefier system than most
people had.  That meant a more expensive PC, or expensive upgrades.  So even if
you run your MS-DOS app in OS/2 "penalty box" you still need those expensive
hardware upgrades.

Side issue: When OS/2 came out, it was for the 80286, which didn't switch
gracefully between real and protected modes.  This meant that an OS/2 system
wouldn't run MS-DOS apps very well, and made the need for OS/2 native apps even
more imperative.

There was a marketing issue too.  About this time, the PS/2 hardware was
released.  There was a perception that you needed a PS/2 to run OS/2.

Next, IBM wanted big bucks for development tools at the start.  If you are a
developer, you aren't going to pay money for developer tools unless you can get
some return on that investment.

Now we are in a chicken/egg issue.  OS/2 doesn't sell well because there aren't
enough apps.  But because it's not selling well, developers don't want to pay
to support it.

IHMO: If IBM would have given away the developer tools in exchange for a
committment of writing a (hopefully good) app for OS/2, they could have broken
that chicken/egg cycle.

But I think the bottom line is that, early on, IBM succeeded in the PC market
because they **didn't** do things the "IBM way".  By the time OS/2 came along,
those bureaucrats wanted to do things the "IBM way" and sunk OS/2's chances. 
By the time OS/2 Warp came along, along with the Intel 80386 (which was much
better than the 80286 for this), OS/2 had too much of a bad reputation - and
Microsoft had too big a hold on the market.

 Ni> Microsoft had some tactics that I think were a bit shady, in pushing
 Ni> competetors out of the market.

That certainly contributed, but I think that most of the blame sits squarely on
IBM.


.... When choosing between two evils, select the newer one.
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