Jerry Pournelle wrote on his "Current View" webpage on 5 Janary 2002 (http://www.pournelle.com) the following: "And [this web page] states the case against Microsoft in fairly extreme terms. I can't say I agree with much of his view of the early history: I was there and this isn't what I saw. Hindsight is wonderful, of course." I have asked Mr. Pournelle to elaborate on this and to put me straight on the facts that I may have gotten wrong, not having been there myself at the time. What follows is our dialogue in chronological order. To save space I have deleted signature blocks and the fully quoted original messages that Mr. Pournelle left at the bottom of his replies, but otherwise the text has of course been left unmodified. ----------[ cut ]---------- From: Frank van Wensveen [mailto:xxx@xxxxxx.nl] Date: Sat, 05 Jan 2002 11:35:34 +0100 To: jerryp@jerrypournelle.com Subject: About your comments to my anti-MS page Dear Mr. Pournelle, One of your readers told me that you had put a link to my anti-Microsoft page on your website. Thank you! However, about the link you wrote: > I can't say I agree with much of his view of the early history: > I was there and this isn't what I saw. Hindsight is wonderful, > of course. Well... I wasn't there, all I have to go by is what I find in literature about the history of Microsoft and of modern computing, and reports from people who claim to have been in the business at the time. But I'm always open to suggestions and corrections whenever someone has better information than I have. So you were there - what did you see? Would you mind telling me what you find wrong with what I've written? I'd really appreciate to hear your points of view. (And yes, I know the quote about Bill saying that 640k should be enough for everyone is apocryphal.) ----------[ cut ]---------- To: "Frank van Wensveen" Subject: RE: About your comments to my anti-MS page From: "Jerry Pournelle" Date: Sat, 5 Jan 2002 10:36:13 -0800 Well start with that since you don't say it's apocryphal. IBM shot itself in the foot having declared war on Microsoft over OS/2 vs. Windows. It would not commit the resources to actually win the war it started. And Gates's most important comment is never dealt with: "In 1989 I went to every application developer I could find and asked them to write applications for Microsoft Windows. But they wouldn't do it. So I went to the Microsoft Applications Group and they didn't have that option." >From that came the Office Suite is which is far more of a key to Microsoft presence than Windows. IBM wouldn't even ship computers with OS/2 preinstalled, wouldn't pay Microsoft licensing fees to let Office run on OS/2 systems, and wouldn't develop its own applications: and charged a lot of money for both Software Developer Kits and Drivers Developer Kits for OS/2. And took forever to put networking into OS/2 long after Windows for Workgroups in partnership with Intel made that trivial for Microsoft users. You want to show that Microsoft never did anything right and the others did little wrong, and that is simply not true. As to the very early days, IBM went to Digital Research for an OS for their upcoming PC, but Gary Killdall wasn't in Pebble Beach the day they arrived for their appointment, and Dottie, who was in charge, was a lawyer and wouldn't sign the NDA. From than came IBM's visit to Microsoft. Microsoft bought their first DOS from Seattle Engineering, which had pirated CP/M and turned some of the interface code around and put COPY in THe OS (as opposed to the CP/M PIP external program). Microsoft bought it outright for $20,000 cash. When the people at Seattle Engineering saw how much money Microsoft was making and they got none of it at all they went to Killdall, and Killdall went to IBM and showed his copyright was still embedded in the DOS code. The resulting settlement let Killdall do what he wanted, which was to divorce Dottie and get people to write Pascal and Logo and other languages, and later to do some CDROM development. Microsoft went on to develop stuff for everyone. Gates saw the computer as for every literate person. IBM saw it as a professional tool for professionals, and called the PC part of the company the "Entry Systems Division" - which ought to tell you a very great deal. Enough. ----------[ cut ]---------- To: "Jerry Pournelle" Subject: Re: About your comments to my anti-MS page From: Frank van Wensveen Date: Sun, 06 Jan 2002 14:08:04 +0100 Dear Mr. Pournelle, Thank you for responding. I appreciate it. On Sat, 5 Jan 2002 10:36:13 -0800, you wrote: > Well start with that since you don't say it's apocryphal. The 640k-quote you mean? That's one of the 'popular apocryphal' kind - sort of like the "Beam me up, Scotty" that everyone uses while that exact phrase has never been actually used on the Star Trek shows. :-) While not fully accurate, it's become almost proverbial. But on to the important bits: > IBM shot itself in the foot having declared war on Microsoft over OS/2 vs. > Windows. It would not commit the resources to actually win the war it > started. True. IBM blundered. They botched OS/2 rather badly with some of the worst marketing in the history of the industry, something that Microsoft cannot really be blamed for. I should probably mention that. > And Gates's most important comment is never dealt with: Most important? Why? > "In 1989 I went to every application developer I could find and asked them > to write applications for Microsoft Windows. But they wouldn't do it. So I > went to the Microsoft Applications Group and they didn't have that option." This proves what, exactly? That developers outside Microsoft who had a free choice didn't want anything with Windows and/or Microsoft at the time? That, I take it, is not the point you're trying to make... or is it? In 1989 Windows was something for which I wouldn't have liked to have to develop application software for, either. You know the history. Microsoft had been collaborating with IBM on OS/2 1.x at the time. This collaboration sprung from the insight that with the advent of the 80286 CPU and Intel's plans for the 386, DOS had become obsolete. IBM worked mainly on the kernel , which in its first incarnation was basically a 16-bit successor to DOS with a command line interface, and Microsoft concentrated on the GUI. Then MS went and dropped IBM and OS/2 entirely. They cried "innovation" and went back to DOS in spite of having admitted it to be obsolete. They released the GUI part of what should have become OS/2 as a separate DOS product which they called Windows 3. So when Gates went shopping for Windows applications, the official idea was (or had been) that DOS was obsolete. Few expected a graphic shell to really change this - Microsoft's recent mucking about with GEM had been far from impressive. It was unclear at the time if a DOS/GUI hybrid had any future at all, and if so what it would look like. Besides, Microsoft had just dropped OS/2 after having touted it for two years as the future of desktop computing, and they'd just given IBM (their primary strategic business partner at the time) the finger. So Microsoft's stragegy was rather muddy right then, IBM was preparing lawsuits against MS because the new Windows code was full of technology that IBM felt MS had stolen, and few third parties felt there was any percentage in partnerships-- nobody knew what kind of a life cycle a partnership and the products resulting therefrom would have, and how it would end. All that *was* clear to application developers, in 1989, was that 90% of their existing DOS application code would have to be rewritten entirely. Bottom line: developing apps for Windows meant a *huge* investment with doubtful returns. Two years later this picture had changed entirely --Windows was still hard to adapt your code to but nobody doubted it was the only way to go-- but that was later. Gates has admitted since that Windows was a long shot at the time, and that he'd staked the entire future of Microsoft on the gamble that Windows would take off the way it did. So I'm not surprised that Gates eventually had to to to his own Application Group. *They* knew what was coming in terms of application code requirements... The rest of the software development community didn't, and wasn't willing to gamble the way Gated did. Even a year after the release of Windows 3.0 many application developers (facing a fait accompli) were still struggling to adapt their application code to Windows, and some never quite made it at all. And so Gates discovered the immense power of product bundling, and also learned a lot about the care and feeding of third party developers. He inspired trust by stating a total commitment to Windows (and, it must be said, by having put his money where his mouth was) and long before the first Windows 95 beta became available, developers had been working with freely available SDK's in order to have their new application code ready by the time Windows 95 hit the market. > >From that came the Office Suite Correct. They took the early incarnation of Word, bought the rest, rewrote and recoded it. > which is far more of a key to Microsoft > presence than Windows. Excuse me? You can buy an A-brand PC without Office but not without Windows. You can do without Office but you need Windows for practically every other major business application. And last but not least, Office and Windows cannot be regarded separately. Office requires Windows and is designed to do so, even more so with the .Net approach (where Office will be reduced to a bunch of services to be accessed with the client software that MS promises to embed in Windows) > IBM wouldn't even ship computers with OS/2 preinstalled, wouldn't pay > Microsoft licensing fees to let Office run on OS/2 systems, and wouldn't > develop its own applications: and charged a lot of money for both Software > Developer Kits and Drivers Developer Kits for OS/2. And took forever to put > networking into OS/2 long after Windows for Workgroups in partnership with > Intel made that trivial for Microsoft users. As I said, IBM blundered. Big time. Eventually they made partnerships with hardware vendors to preload OS/2 3.0, but that was far too late, and Warp needed bigger hardware than it was shipped with, was practically impossible to configure for the average end user, and lacked driver support in a really bad way. In fact it was not market-ready. Bottom line: IBM botched what could have been a viable OS. In spite of having created the original PC, IBM never really understood the desktop market. I should probably mention that as well. > You want to show that Microsoft never did anything right and the others did > little wrong, and that is simply not true. IBM created OS/2 which was basically a better OS architecture, but then they went and blew it by taking too long to finish it, releasing it half-baked, and they did some of the worst marketing in history, as I said above. > As to the very early days, IBM went to Digital Research for an OS for their > upcoming PC, but Gary Killdall wasn't in Pebble Beach the day they arrived > for their appointment, and Dottie, who was in charge, was a lawyer and > wouldn't sign the NDA. From than came IBM's visit to Microsoft. True. That's the stuff of legend. I know the story, but I haven't included it in my article because it's not really relevant there. > Microsoft bought their first DOS from Seattle Engineering, Which operated under the name Seattle Computer Products (SCP) at the time. > which had pirated CP/M > and turned some of the interface code around and put COPY in the OS (as opposed > to the CP/M PIP external program). And they named the resulting product (rip-off if you like) QDOS. > Microsoft bought it outright for $20,000 cash. OK... (The price is irrelevant, though.) Now, in my artile I wrote: "That first version of PC-DOS (later MS-DOS) was little more than a revamped version of QDOS (AKA DOS-86), the code of which Microsoft purchased from SCP, along with a few ideas that were "borrowed" from CP/M. (QDOS, which stands for "Quick & Dirty Operating System, was a derivative from CP/M as well.) " So far I still don't see where I have been wrong... Except perhaps for the "borrowed from CP/M" bit which suggests that MS added CP/M code to QDOS, which they didn't. I should probably rephrase that. > When the people at Seattle Engineering saw how much money Microsoft > was making and they got none of it at all they went to Killdall, and > Killdall went to IBM and showed his copyright was still embedded in the DOS > code. The resulting settlement let Killdall do what he wanted, which was to > divorce Dottie and get people to write Pascal and Logo and other languages, > and later to do some CDROM development. Which may be true, but is IMO again irrelevant to the subject of my article. Killdall will be remembered as having made the most capital business blunder in modern history, but that's beside the point. > Microsoft went on to develop stuff for everyone. Gates saw the computer as > for every literate person. IBM saw it as a professional tool for > professionals, and called the PC part of the company the "Entry Systems > Division" - which ought to tell you a very great deal. It tells me that IBM has never understood the desktop market and approached it in the same way as they approached the market for mini and midrange systems. The bottom line is that many companies make good stuff but ruin it through terrible marketing (not only IBM's OS/2 debacle comes to mind, Novell for example is rapidly making itself extinct through exactly the same practices) while Microsoft releases IMO bad quality products but use brilliant marketing tactics and thrive as a result. I have already made that point in my article. To summarize: Your primary concern with my article seems to be that I don't mention how IBM disappointed friend and foe with the way they botched OS/2. I shall add a passage about the MS/IBM breakup and how IBM was largely responsible for the demise of their version of OS/2. Apart from that I'm not quite sure how your comments correct what I wrote about the early history. Unless I've completely misunderstood you, of course. Feel free to point out to me what I've missed here, though. > Enough. Quite. :-) ----------[ cut ]---------- To: "Frank van Wensveen" Subject: RE: About your comments to my anti-MS page From: "Jerry Pournelle" Date: Sun, 6 Jan 2002 22:06:03 -0800 It is his most important comment because it is the key to Microsoft Dominance. Gates bet the company that he could market an OS with applications that people would buy in preference to the "better" ones like UNIX and OS/2 and others. He understood that people just wanted to USE their machines, not become experts. The interesting part is that he was so successful that most of the experts ended up using Microsoft applications. It is the applications that won people, not Windows itselt. Many of those apps were written for the Apple Macintosh, and had Apple had a saner marketing strategy, Microsoft would be best known for its Macintosh Applications like Word and Excel... When Word Perfect wouldn't do Windows, and Lotus wouldn't do Windows, and Novel tried to avoid doing windows.... Microsoft Applications Group turned out stuff that sort of worked, the hardware got faster and it did work, and the Number One word processor and #2 and #3 for that matter vanished. Word took over, Excel took over, Power Point - all three applications first marketed for the Mac - won people over. Simple as that, and no one pays attention. And Microsoft didn't drop OS/2, IBM declared war on a confused Bill Gates. I was there. At the time IBM was a much larger company. They started a war then forgot to fight. Thanks for the inputs. I have deadlines, and while I enjoy dialogues I seldom have enough time to do it right. Best regard J ----------[ cut ]---------- To: "Jerry Pournelle" Subject: Re: About your comments to my anti-MS page From: Frank van Wensveen Date: Mon, 07 Jan 2002 20:24:40 +0100 Dear Mr. Pournelle, Thank you for responding. On Sun, 6 Jan 2002 22:07:15 -0800, you wrote: [Gates' comment about unwilling application developers] > It is his most important comment because it is the key to Microsoft > Dominance. I disagree. IMO the key to Microsoft's dominance is marketing based on platform dependency and proprietary technology. It's easy to develop for Windows because there are low-threshold development tools in abundance. As soon as developers start to make software for Windows, they're stuck with it. Microsoft's commercial strategy has always been brilliant, and Gates is a commercial genius. That is the key. And I believe I have said so, in words to that effect, in my article. > Gates bet the company that he could market an OS with applications that > people would buy in preference to the "better" ones like UNIX and OS/2 and > others. He understood that people just wanted to USE their machines, not > become experts. True. I don't deny that (and I never have) but I only wish he would have done that with good quality products instead of with sloppy hacks, and without contracts that force hardware vendors to ship nothing without Windows in order to be allowed to ship Windows at all. > The interesting part is that he was so successful that most of the experts > ended up using Microsoft applications. It is the applications that won > people, not Windows itselt. That's because Microsoft applications work better under Windows (this was especially true with earlier versions of Windows) than competing products, and were released sooner. > Many of those apps were written for the Apple Macintosh, and had Apple had a > saner marketing strategy, Microsoft would be best known for its Macintosh > Applications like Word and Excel... Let it go on record that I am very much impressed with Apple. Not with their marketing strategy, but by the fact that they still exist in spite of it. > When Word Perfect wouldn't do Windows, Correction: Word Perfect *couldn't* do Windows. Granted, they tried to stick their heads in the sand but Windows just wouldn't go away, and eventually they faced up to the fact that they had no choice. But then it became obvious that they were in serious trouble because of all major DOS applications, theirs was one of the least portable. The DOS versions of WP had no choice but to rely on their own CRT, font and printer support routines because DOS didn't offer any support for that at all, and in WP the bulk of the code consisted of low-level routines that had to do with device support. In order to port WP to Windows a major rewrite was in order, and the above parts of the code that WP had traditionally concentrated on had to be redesigned from scratch. WP struggled for a time, and then announced that their Windows release would incorporate its own printer support in spite of the fact that printer support now belonged in the OS rather than in the application, which illustrates how deep they were in it. Reactions to that idea eventually convinced them that it would bring disaster, and they struggled on. Finally after many months (I forget exactly how long) the first version of WP for Windows was released and proved to be dreadfully slow, both in screen and printer output, and instable to boot. Later versions weren't up to standards either. Microsoft on the other hand had been shipping Word in a bundle with Windows from day one. And that was the end of WP. > and Lotus wouldn't do Windows, Lotus was full of non-portable low-level code as well (although for less obvious reasons). > and Novel tried to avoid doing windows.... Eh? How should Novell have "done Windows"? Novell offered a perfectly good DOS client that ran under Windows 3, and provided clients for later versions (that MS shipped with Novell clients as well). Novell had to compete with Windows Server products, which is not the same as developing application software for it) and failed to do so, mainly because of the mess that Ray Noorda left when he resigned. Since then their strategy has drifted into all directions at once and gotten nowhere, and Microsoft may have scared them into that but Novell's failure to respond to the first real competition they ever faced is inexcusable. Novell dug its own grave and now they're about to fall into it. But I digress. More to the point: a major weapon (quite possibly unintended) in killing off competing application vendors may have been Windows' backward capability with DOS. Users could exit Windows to DOS (so they still had DOS, in a way) and Windows had its own DOS box. This may have given many DOS application developers the impression that porting DOS applications to Windows wasn't all that urgent. By the time they knew that to be a fatal mistake, it was too late for many of them. > Microsoft Applications Group turned out stuff that sort of worked, Because everyeone else at the time had major problems with porting their DOS code to Windows! And Microsoft released that stuff that sort of worked several months ahead of the competition. *That* is the point here. > the hardware got faster and it did work, and > the Number One word processor and #2 and #3 for that matter vanished. Word > took over, Excel took over, Power Point - all three applications first > marketed for the Mac - won people over. Simple as that, and no one pays > attention. Perhaps because no one sees it that way? > And Microsoft didn't drop OS/2, IBM declared war on a confused Bill Gates. I > was there. Interesting. So you saw it from the inside. How, and for how long, were you involved with MS and/or IBM before, during and after the breakup? And what *exactly* happened then and there, and what were the circumstances? I'm curious. I wasn't there, so I saw it from the outsside and what I saw at the time is this: IBM used Presentation Manager in OS/2, but its API was incompatible with that used by Windows. (For example PM had it's own ideas about positioning coordinates, e.g. 0,0 was bottom left which went, and goes, among most conventions). The code developed by IBM and Microsoft continued to diverge, and release dates began to slip. The media reported that tensions began to develop in their relationship. And suddenly Windows 3.0 hit the market which relieved much of the need for OS/2 for a couple of years, and IBM and MS broke up. Shortly thereafter MS announced that they would develop Windows NT which they considered to be competitive with OS/2. Now from where I sit this doesn't look like it was all IBM's idea. > At the time IBM was a much larger company. Granted, but I fail to see why that implies that they initiated the breakup. Microsoft was smaller than IBM but Gates doesn't lack the guts (and never did) to do what he considers best for Microsoft. > They started a war then forgot to fight. MS was a young, dynamic and aggressive company, while IBM was a lumbering giant. Developments at MS had, and have, always been much faster than at IBM. IBM didn't forget to fight, they just didn't get around to it until it was far too late. Personally I don't doubt for a second that Gates recognized the fact that he could operate faster without IBM than with them. And IBM's track record in the desktop software market at the time had not been exactly impressive either; they have never been known for lean&mean desktop software. Gates' strategy never involved major fights with IBM - he knew he could pick up his marbles (and according to IBM, a few of theirs as well) and outrun them. And that's exactly what he did. Again, this is what it looks like from where I sit. From a different perspective, things often look different. > Thanks for the inputs. I have deadlines, > and while I enjoy dialogues I seldom have enough time to do it right. I understand. I enjoy dialogues as well (especially the comparing of different points of view) and I appreciate the time you spend on this. ----------[ cut ]---------- To: "Frank van Wensveen" Subject: RE: About your comments to my anti-MS page From: "Jerry Pournelle" Date: Mon, 7 Jan 2002 11:53:06 -0800 If you have not figured out that what you are saying is almost precisely what I said, except that you have an attitude about it, then you should think on the subject. What in the world were people supposed to do? No one would write applications for Windows, because Windows was so awful to write applications for, only the applications Microsoft wrote for Windows worked better under Windows than the applications others wrote for non-Windows so... Ye gods, you contradict yourself at every turn because you just don't like Microsoft. So be it, but I haven't time to be in a religious debate. Microsoft discount policies were pretty rugged but don't tell me that IBM couldn't ship machines with OS/2. They chose not to, and they chose not to get anyone else to do it either. But what, other than OS/2, was the alternative to Windows? CP/M? Overpriced Apple with hardware obsolete about the time the machines went on sale? Buy a Lisa to develop Macintosh applications with? Buy a Mac and then go buy an external fan because Apple refused to put a fan in their case? The fact is that hardware companies were stuck: IBM "entry systems" didn't take the PC market seriously, but to the extent that they did they would rather sell hardware than software. Just what was the alternative to Windows? But no one would write applications for Windows so Microsoft had to do that. As to Word Perfect, getting it to run on Windows wouldn't have been that hard if they had tried, but they didn't try until late because they were smug in their dominance. The world didn't have to go the way it did, but all the potential competitors to Microsoft enjoyed being rich like playboys until it was too late and then they went to courts. Oh well Tell me, sir, what should people have done back in those days? Wait for "good" programs? OF COURSE Microsoft rushed stuff out into the market with the hopes that better hardware would bail them out. As opposed to waiting until "it was right" at which point it would be obsolete because of Moore's Law. The hardware was getting better and writing software at the edge of what you could do with existing hardware was a very good bet. But think as you like. ----------[ cut ]---------- To: "Jerry Pournelle" Subject: Re: About your comments to my anti-MS page From: Frank van Wensveen Date: Tue, 08 Jan 2002 12:54:56 +0100 Dear Mr. Pournelle, On Mon, 7 Jan 2002 11:53:06 -0800, you wrote: > If you have not figured out that what you are saying is almost precisely > what I said, except that you have an attitude about it, then you should > think on the subject. We started this discussion when you said you disagreed with my version of Microsoft's early history and I asked you to correct me on it. In a nutshell, you gave me an account of how MS came to supply DOS, which matched what I wrote in my article almost literally. You spoke about OS/2 which I had neglected to mention, and emphasized how IBM blundered with OS/2. About Windows applications you quoted Gates who said that he was forced to make his own applications because nobody else would develop WinApps, and you added comments to the effect that the whole history of Windows and WinApps was as much the fault of Microsoft's competitors as it was Microsofts. In response I pointed out that I had my facts right on the history of DOS, that IMO the OS/2 collaboration wasn't all that relevant but that indeed IBM had botched OS/2, that Microsoft's competitors weren't ready for Windows but only Microsoft's Application Group was, and that therefore neither competitors nor consumers had a choice, which is the gist of my article. Now you say that I agree with you and that I contradict myself at every turn, and we're suddenly discussing the hardware market instead of Microsoft's early history. If you feel this to be a religious debate, perhaps this discussion has passed the point of usefulness. Indeed a dialogue along the lines of "You'd see that I'm right if you'd only think about it" is rapidly becoming a waste of time. To address your comments one last time: > What in the world were people supposed to do? Indeed. They had no choice, which is exactly what I've been saying all the time. However Gates' quote implies that they did have a choice but weren't interested, which is simply not true. > No one would write > applications for Windows, because Windows was so awful to write applications > for, only the applications Microsoft wrote for Windows worked better under > Windows than the applications others wrote for non-Windows so... So Microsoft developed Windows while the IBM/MS breakup over OS/2 was in the air, which muddied the water and scared everyone off. Then they wrote apps for their own OS and bundled them with it, months before their competitors were able to catch up. Which is what I wrote in my article, albeit in less detail. It also makes Gates' statement that he was forced to do what he did because the competition wouldn't, sound a bit hypocritical at best. > Microsoft discount policies were pretty rugged Yes, but that's irrelevant. There's nothing wrong with discounts, that's just a way of doing business and boosting sales. But MS's later policies where hardware vendors were forced to ship Windows and nothing else with each PC, regardless whether or not the customer wanted it, are something else entirely. And *that* is what I'm addressing in my article. > but don't tell me that IBM > couldn't ship machines with OS/2. They chose not to, and they chose not to > get anyone else to do it either. But what, other than OS/2, was the > alternative to Windows? At the time there wasn't, and I have never blamed Microsoft for that fact. What I do blame them for is the bad quality of the only product available, and the way it's deliberately designed to remain the one and only option available to the users. > The world didn't have to go the way it did, but all the potential > competitors to Microsoft enjoyed being rich like playboys > until it was too late and then they went to courts. Oh well If that's the way you want to see it, be my guest. > Tell me, sir, what should people have done back in those days? Wait for > "good" programs? Most of the "good" programs at the time were killed off when Microsoft released an OS that only their own Applications Group was ready for and bundled their own applications with Windows, whereupon they became impossible to unhorse. This is what I write in my article. > OF COURSE Microsoft rushed stuff out into the market with > the hopes that better hardware would bail them out. As opposed to waiting > until "it was right" at which point it would be obsolete because of Moore's > Law. The hardware was getting better and writing software at the edge of > what you could do with existing hardware was a very good bet. Which is both true and completely beside the point since that's what all cutting edge developers do. But at this point I no longer believe we're discussing how I was wrong about my account of the "early history" of the whole Microsoft issue. > But think as you like. As do we all. Thank you for your time. ----------[ cut ]---------- To: "Frank van Wensveen" Subject: RE: About your comments to my anti-MS page From: "Jerry Pournelle" Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2002 08:29:00 -0800 I am sure you're right. This is a deadline day for a column. ---[ End Of Thread ]--- ====================================================================== Another reader contributed the following: "I was a consultant to IBM during the development of the PC, having fomented much of the early microprocessor industry between 1971 and 1979 (when the PC project was started at IBM). Some comments in your dialog with Jerry Pournelle: IBM did NOT see the IBM PC as a "professional tool." One of the reasons the original PC has an audio I/O port was for cassette tape storage, because they thought that consumers might not add more storage. Remember, the original IBM PC was marketed through the Sears retail chain (Sears merchandisers actually gave IBM the idea of printing the image of the computer on the box), so IBM wasn't sure who'd really buy it. The professional market won out in the short term, which is way we got the IBM PC XT, with a 10 MB (huge!) hard disk. IBM's major concern was to protect the sales of their low-end word processor (model 5170, I think...although I could research it; the original PC was model 5150), selling for north of $5,000 in the professional market, which is why they bundled the FORTH-based word processor written by an ex-felon (John Draper, aka "Cap'n Crunch" and a colleague who was free-basing a gram-and-a-half oc cocaine a day at the time...I got that project back on delivery schedule, averting a three-month delay in the PC launch)."