Martin Banks, Personal Computer World 03/83 - checked

March 1983

By the time you read this, the new year will have already taken shape and be well on its way. At the time of writing, however, it is still a fond gleam in a politician's eye. This is a time when it is worth considering what the next 12 months will bring, and whether you will benefit from it anyway.

Such thoughts may seem strange when the world and its uncle suddenly wants to buy a home computer for itself and its children. Both the users, and the industry, should benefit greatly from such an arrangement. Unfortunately, it is exactly this demand from users and potential users that can create problems - problems that can cause those users disquiet, distress and aggravation.

Not least of such problems is the one outlined by my colleague, PCW's news-hound Guy Kewney, in the January issue of this august magazine. He pointed out the number of products - both complete machines and add-on bits and pieces - that should have been available by Christmas time. Unfortunately, they were not available.

Now this is a fairly common occurrence in the computer business, where pre-announcement of hardware and software has been used for years as a legitimate, if unfair, marketing tool. With mainframe computers especially, where the purchase price is large and the purchaser's lead time on the decision-making process long, there is an arguable justification for a major manufacturer to pre-announce a new product, even though it may not be available for 18 months. Okay, so it's unfair not to tell people it won't be available, but with large purchases, the time scales involved make such tactics tolerable at least.

But now, as Guy pointed out, many of the manufacturers in the personal computer business are doing the same thing. They are not, however, doing it for the same reasons, at least not always, for with the mainframe manufacturers the ploy is consciously used to prevent a potential customer from placing an order with a rival.

In the personal computer business it would appear to be, as much as anything, an over-enthusiastic desire on the part of some companies to be seen in the marketplace with the latest gizmo. It is, to me at least one of the saddest aspects of the personal computer business that it seems so intent on fostering the 'techno-freak' aspects of users. It is therefore imperative, in the manufacturers' eyes, to appear to the users as the company with all the latest bells and whistles. (In this context, one important bell and/or whistle is cost -or the lack of it.) Sadly, some companies could even be accused of announcing a new product before they have actually really cracked the problems of making its predecessor.

At the low end of the market, where machines cost between £50 and £150, this techno-freak marketing approach is quite noticeable. Virtually every issue of this, and other magazines, contains at least one advert for an entirely new product, the latest gizmo that technology can bring. It usually comes from a company that no one has heard of that is wishing to join a market that is already crowded with other similar companies that are under-financed and waiting to become cannon-fodder for the Japanese.

All these companies now face major problems. The size and growth rate of the market for small home computers has taken many by surprise, including the manufacturers themselves. This would seem at first sight to indicate that there should be plenty of room for all-comers in the marketplace. Unfortunately, things don't normally work out that way. In a market that is large, rapidly growing, and oriented towards high volume merchandising techniques, the fact that a new manufacturer on the scene has the best product is actually irrelevant. What counts is being able to manufacture it in high volume, coupled with the finance, ability and skill to support the distribution network.

Such requirements demand, in the end, the capabilities of a big company, and the majority of the minnows just do not match up, no matter how good their products may be. In the high-volume home computers marketplace, there is room for only a handful of successful manufacturers, yet the UK has thrown up more contenders than that itself.

By this time next year it would seem highly unlikely that many, if any, will have advanced much further then they are at present. Some inevitably, will have regressed significantly.

Such problems do prompt the general question of when is it a good time to purchase a system: should a user jump in now or wait for something better? In the home computer area, perhaps more so than anywhere else, the answer is to buy what is available on the shelf. There will always be something better coming along, and even if you wait for that to actually appear, something better will by then be coming.

The same is true for the bigger personal computer systems, those that find their way into the professions and small businesses. The main 'something better' in this area is, of course, tangible, for it is the IBM Personal Computer, due to finally and formally appear in this country about now (that's now as you read this, not now as I write it).

For better or worse, IBM's machine has already become the up-market hardware equivalent of CP/M, the de facto standard against which all others are compared and evaluated. IBM has a habit of assuming that level of significance in the computer industry.

The official marketing of the Personal Computer will at last regularise a hotch-potch situation in the sale of the machine in the UK, it having been available from an ever-growing number of suppliers - both respectable and dubious. Many of the 'back-doors' through which the machine has crept into this country will probably become superfluous, and may well consequently wither away. For the IBM PC, it must be assumed that the formalisation of its UK marketing will be one of the better events of the coming year, certainly from the user's point of view. It goes without saying that there is a certain assumption that IBM, as a company mainly experienced in marketing other types of system, will actually manage the event correctly.

The same remarks, if to a lesser degree, can be made about the appearance of the DEC family of machines, though these have so far failed to promulgate quite the excitement of the IBM system, through not generating a 'black market'. Both of these machines have been launched long enough to become known to the users. More interesting in terms of speculation are the products from those two stalwarts of the personal computer industry, Commodore and Apple.

The former, even just a year ago, looked remarkably moribund. The PET was long in the tooth and the VIC not yet too significant. Announcements were rumoured to be around the corner, but had not yet arrived and all that was available was gossip. Now the company's dealers should be starting to sell the subjects of that gossip: the 500 and 700 series machines.

It is early days yet (though much later than expected - another example of pre-announcement of new products) but the company may well have come up with a couple of interesting systems. The interest comes from the fact that they combine the best bits of the PET, which in this case means much of the software and data files already established by users, with greater processing power, and the opportunity to add-on second processors that allow the machines to emulate such as the IBM PC.

If it works well, this could prove to be a good trick, and one that the users could find very helpful. Many will find it has been worth waiting for.

The same may be true in a year's time of that other company, Apple. Apple II, till now arguably the most successful single system produced, is as long in the tooth as ever the PET was. Apple III through its early problems and the subsequent appearance of rival and superior l6-bit machines, has never managed to take the world by storm.

Now, however, there is Lisa, a system about which there is (at the time of writing) only conjecture. The main platform of that conjecture, however, is that it will incorporate an operating system that will at last give true meaning to that oft-maligned term 'user-friendly'. It will allow users to perform tasks in the way they think of them, rather than demanding the opposite of the user.

As with so many manufacturers, not least of which has been Apple itself, the announcement of the machine may not mean too much to the user for a while. Machines do have a habit of not appearing on time. That is usually a good reason for the user to purchase what is actually available - it does at least exist. Both the Commodore and Apple machines show however that with technology there is also always something better coming over the horizon.

end