Computers - and why some failed in the market place.

Light thinking day today, so random thoughts are going through my head.

One of those thoughts is why many early computers failed in the marketplace and I think I have a reason.

When PCs first came out, they were for hobbyists and techies.  But when the Triad (TRS-80, Apple II, Commodore PET) came out in the late '70s, computers become consumer items.

Now, for a consumer, a computer is a tool.  The value of a tool is measured in how much work it can do for you vs. how much money it cost.  That's a big reason why the Apple II was the low seller of the Triad.  It was pricey and didn't do much more than the others (other than have pretty colors).

As time went on, vendors differentiated by making their hardware better.  But the better hardware came at a cost: incompatibility.  If you moved from Vendor 1 to Vendor 2, your software didn't work and you had to repurchase it.

CP/M fixed that to a certain extent.  A Z80 CP/M package would work on any other Z80 CP/M system (to a certain extent).  I think that's what gave people the thought to see what the full cost of "upgrading" their computer would be.

But when IBM came out with their PC - made from off the shelf components so anyone could create a clone - that changed.  Now, if you purchased a PC clone and moved to another PC clone, your software would work (again, mostly).

It's the "mostly" that was the problem for many vendors.

Tandy, for example, came out with the Tandy 2000.  It was, hardware-wise, much better than the competition.  But it wasn't that compatible.

The Amiga was another example of great hardware, but true cost of moving from your old system to a better, but incompatible, one was just too high.

When I look back at the old computer systems, I see the shift in thinking among consumers.  Yes, better hardware is good, but if I have to repurchase all my software (and in many cases, there was no software to purchase for the new computer), the value just isn't there.

A fast computer with pretty graphics that can do none of the things that I need it to is just a paper weight taking up desk space.  Ya, I know that in a year, if enough people purchase this new computer system, the software will be there.  But I need it to do something today not tomorrow.  So the market doesn't buy and the new computer fails in the market place.

Think about this.  My TRS-80 Model 4P wasn't discontinued until 1981.  Z80.  Only 128K memory (max), 2 floppy drives (max), IBM clones having taken over the market already.  But many people had made big investments in TRSDOS (and the like) software for themselves and the cost of moving to a powerful IBM clone was too high.