A World Without the IBM PC
IBM never releases the PC or it fails in the market. What then? Would users today be better or worse off?
Many attribute the ubiquity and affordability of home computing to the spectacular success of the PC and Microsoft.
My good old sparring partner Sergiy and me don’t agree on this. But that is part of the fun. So join in speculation and rants about an alternative computing history. Let us set the stage with this quote from Sergiy:
And while evaluating what the world would look like without PC, it’s always worth to keep in mind, that cheap hardware resulted to a wider market ⇒ stronger competition ⇒ faster innovation.
Yes, there are troubles, viruses, software problems and incompatibilities. But don’t forget, that most people who suffered from this would not have a personal computer at all, if there would be only Apple, for example.
You and me most likely would not have jobs and would not be discussing the topic without IBM business decision to make PC open.
Unfortunately I don’t have a magical crystal ball or psychic powers so I cannot know what the world would have looked like without the dominance of the PC. But I can look at what the world of computing was like in the late 1980s before the PC…
