

One Company Dared Compete With IBM And Macintosh Computers In 1984 - sirteno
http://singularityhub.com/2012/10/11/one-company-dared-to-compete-with-ibm-and-macintosh-computers-in-1984-check-these-awesome-retro-commercials/

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yuhong
Ah, the Compaq Portable, one of the first IBM PC clones with a clean room
reverse engineered BIOS. Phoenix did the same reverse engineering and sold it
to others, creating an entire industry.

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InclinedPlane
One wonders how things would have played out differently if today's legal
climate pertained back then.

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mahmud
I believe reverse-engineering is _still_ legal.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reverse_engineering#Legality>

<http://www.chillingeffects.org/question.cgi?QuestionID=195>

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jevinskie
Not when doing DRM work. It is an anti-circumvention device under the DMCA and
the "research exception" is very weak and almost worthless in practice.

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vidarh
.. in the US. In most of Europe for example, your ability to circumvent DRM
for the purpose of reverse engineering for interoperability is protected.

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petercooper
I don't think they ever had ads as cool as these but here in the UK, Apricot -
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apricot_Computers> \- and Acorn (where ARM
sprang from) were competing against IBM in the same market -
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acorn_Business_Computer> .. sadly neither turned
into a big deal, other than the ARM work, but it's nice looking back on a time
when we Brits had something serious to contribute in this area of technology.

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Codhisattva
Silliest headline ever. As I recall in 1984 the world had Tandy, Leading Edge,
Epson, Dell, AT&T, NEC, Atari, Commodore and countless others were all
competing with IBM and Apple.

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DerekL
Also, in 1984 one of the major competitors to the Macintosh was the Apple II.
The Mac didn't overtake the Apple II series in unit sales until about 1987.

<http://arstechnica.com/features/2005/12/total-share/5/>

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greenyoda
I remember that around that time several other companies were competing with
IBM. Texas Instruments made a PC-compatible machine, DEC made a (somewhat) PC-
compatible machine[1], etc. And Gateway was founded in 1985.[2] There's a lot
more information on IBM PC clones in the Wikipedia article on that topic.[3]

[1] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_100>

[2] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway%2C_Inc>.

[3] <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_clone>

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Bud
Fantastic stuff from John Cleese. Worth a viewing; a great trip into the
toddler-hood of personal computing.

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johnohara
Say what you will about Compaq, Grid and others, actually seeing a running
Metaphor Computer System in production was the same as time travel to the
future.

Standing in a room full of text-based devices in 1985 and looking at
Metaphor's graphical interface, wireless keyboard and mouse, ethernet
backbone, laser printers, and folder-based O/S was stunning.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphor_Computer_Systems>

<http://www.johnweeks.com/tour/metaphor/>

<http://www.johnweeks.com/tour/metaphor/slideshow.html>

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jcr
The Compaq "Portable" was a wonderful machine in its day. I had two of them.
Though they were technically "portable" when compared to the IBM offerings,
they were damn heavy; I remember them being 50 to 60 lbs depending on how they
were configured (single floppy, dual floppy, or floppy and a 20-40 MB hard
drive). Lugging one through an airport generally resulted in far more exercise
than most people would ever want on a business trip, so the old joke was, "The
Compaq Portable was designed by engineers who thought if you put a handle on a
refrigerator that made it portable."

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crawdog
I remember when laptops had handles. <http://instagr.am/p/Q8sa57ovnv/>

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finnw
That's a luggable not a laptop.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_computer>

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GengYang
Hello,

Funny stuff from John Cleese - The way i understand it, Compaq was competing
with IBM purely on speed (the same, but faster), not dissimilar from how some
folks are trying to create next-gen supercomputers nowadays. Is it possible to
create a computer that beats the competition based on beauty and elegance
instead (like how the Spanish soccer team plays on the world stage) ? A few
months ago, I watched the Marvel Avengers Movie and in it, Iron Man Tony Stark
had this little device where he flicked his fingers at a screen and this
wonderful little 3d hologram of a computer popped up which he manipulated with
his fingers. Anyone has any good ideas to engineer something like that ? I
would love to hear and work with you on something like this - there could be
other imaginative and original solutions I would guess.

Thanks a lot.

GengYang

