Martin Banks, Personal Computer World 02/84 - checked

February 1984

Sometimes, in the wee small hours of the morning when I lie abed betwixt consciousness and the oblivion of sleep, I get these strange nostalgic feelings come over me. I think back to the good old days, days when men were men and personal computers were personal computers, and then I start to wonder where it all went wrong.

In those early days of Altair and Imsai, when the Apple was but a seedling in the minds of Wozniak and Jobs, per sonal computers were called that be cause they were small enough to be carried by one person - just. They didn't do too much, and broke down a good deal; they had to be hand-booted with toggle switches and just adored the feel of a hot soldering iron inside them.

One person and a soldering iron could become a computer company almost overnight, and many did as they discovered that there were enough nutty people out there willing to help them turn a hobby into a business. Many of them, the aforesaid Wozniak and Jobs being no exception, grew to become extremely successful and wealthy as their businesses grew and refused to fall over in the financial mire that many predicted for them.

This, of course, was their downfall. Their very success, proving that there was a long-term market for personal computers of many different types, ultimately attracted the interest of more old-fashioned computer people. These elders had, up until that time, assumed a divine right to the computer industry and markets, yet the little upstarts had shown it was not so. Something had to be done.

Not unnaturally, these 'other people' decided to do it. Thus it was that IBM, the jolly blue giant of Armonk, decided to launch the IBM PC. At that point in time, personal computing, and the industry it had spawned, stopped being fun. It became a business, a big business, and unfortunately, a boring business. It's always the same of course, when something stops being fun anymore.

It may be an over-simplistic view, but the arrival of IBM on the scene has been a major contributor to the arrival of the long-expected shake-out in the person al computer business. By the time the shake-out has finished, the number of companies still making significant quantities of computer hardware will have been drastically reduced. While you might comment 'so what?', the end result for the users is not likely to be the best thing that ever happened to them.

Why? - Well, consumer choice will become restricted to the point of constriction. Not only will there be fewer companies making machines, the difference between those machines will become increasingly negligible. For better or worse, now that IBM is in the business the others are all followers, devout and humble. Doing something different in hardware design or philosophy may well mark a company as socially deviant and therefore the target for the ultimate sanction - terminal financial ruin.

Ironically, of course, IBM is actually what the users (or the majority of them in America, anyway) want to have in the market. To them the name IBM means respectability and reliability. They know that the company will still be around next year if something goes wrong with the kit. For many business users this is a vital consideration, one that prejudices their decisions when it comes to buying a small computer system. They might like the appearance and specification of another make of machine, but will the company survive? After all, microcomputing is still a very young industry, with very young and inexperienced companies making it up; such worries are understandable for business managers looking to a long-term future (especially their own).

The end result, however, is that such caution does not easily square with a competitive market-place: something has to give. In this case it is competition that is giving, and for the end user that is sad. It will be sad to see a time when there are a dozen or so makes of computer on the world market, and each one a clone of the products of that one big company, IBM.

If the machine had been produced by any other manufacturer it would have been taken on its merits, praised where needed, abused where required and that would have been an end to it. Many companies have produced systems just as sensible and 'worthy' as the IBM PC. They have (or have not) found their niche in the market-place, served their users more or less as expected and that has been an end to the matter. Now there is the matter of the little silver badge on the little cream box. IBM is in the business and all the manufacturers are scared. Even the mighty Apple, for all its standing in the industry, has felt the ground shaken beneath its feet.

If IBM had made Apple's Lisa it would not only have been hailed as a product, it would also have taken the business apart. But it didn't and Apple is now beginning to feel the predictable chill of falling profits that comes from a market where leadership has been lost.

And now IBM is turning its sights onto new markets, other areas of the computer business in which some companies are doing well and which the jolly blue giant has not previously bothered about. The target is the home/personal computer market, until now the chief stamping ground of Commodore and Sinclair.

It will be interesting to see how it survives in this particular nest of vipers, for some other big names (which one assumes generally know what they are doing) have been bitten hard, long and painfully. Some, notably Texas Instruments and Mattel, have decided on amputation rather than let the poison spread and become terminal.

For other, smaller companies, there has been nothing available to amputate. This has started to result in plenty of ritual disembowelments.

It will also be interesting to see whether IBM can repeat its initial success in the small business market down at the home/personal level. It has already shown itself an exception to the maxim that you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but whether it can learn another set of new ones remains to be seen. The Commodore, for example, has shown that the product does not have to be that sensational or sexy. An ordinary little computer will do, just make sure it has some software available then pile it high and sell it aggressively.

From early indications, IBM would seem to have once again learned the first part of this trick. The PC Junior (nee : Peanut} appears to be a not drastically exciting cut-down of the PC with one or two novelties thrown in (the infra-red remote keyboard sounds a smart idea). It remains to be seen whether the company will learn how to sell the beasts in the necessary manner. It is not averse to a bit of cut-throat commercialism, but IBM has never sullied into the consumer market-place before, and consumers are a funny bunch, aren't they!!

Next year, therefore, could be the one in which all interest finally disappears from the computer market - when it stops even remotely being `fun'. IBM will take over everything remotely digital in nature and will become rich enough to buy India as a holiday resort for jaded executives. On the other hand . . .

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