

The greatest flops in computer history - vaksel
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/scienceandtechnology/technology/5132085/The-10-greatest-flops-in-computer-history.html

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parenthesis
It depends what you mean by "flop" — yes, I know they mean commercial flop —
but several of these have had great effects, even though money for the
original companies wasn't among them:

Xerox Alto: I don't think I need to mention all the stuff developed in PARC
that is now utterly ubiquitous.

Apple Lisa: A big influence on her more famous brother, the Macintosh.

Sinclair QL: Helped Linus Torvalds to decide to target Linux initially at the
x86.

NeXT: Spawned OS X ; kept Steve Jobs in the computer industry until his return
to Apple.

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jhancock
yep, the Alto, Lisa, QL, and NeXT where huge successes in my book.

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known
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenix>

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edw519
They forgot #1: IBM's failure to keep DOS proprietary.

Imagine a world with no Microsoft and IBM having a 70% share instead of being
just another consultancy.

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raganwald
If IBM had retained DOS, I don't think it would have a 70% share. There were
other PC operating systems that were somewhat portable, such as CP/M and
whatever Digital Research was doing at the time.

My bet is that if there was no MS-DOS, one of the others would have risen in
its place.

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edw519
IBM's mistake wasn't allowing other PC operating systems to survive. (CP/M was
only 8 bit and not a threat.) It was allowing Microsoft to license MS-DOS to
other hardware manufacturers. They simply didn't understand the threat. They
do now.

(Another way to think about it: If IBM had retained license to DOS, the only 2
laptops you could buy today would be Apple & Lenova.)

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mtw
and I thought it would be about supercomputers and teraflops

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weegee
My first ever computer was a Timex Sinclair 1000. It was given to my by my
uncle, who won it in a golf tournament. It came with a 16k memory expansion
module, that plugged into the back of it, and a couple of cassette games,
Frogger, and something else that I can't remember now. It took about 20-30
minutes to load the games by cassette. The membrane keyboard was terrible. Of
course there was no modem or printer, so it was pretty limited. The best thing
about it was that it was so small. Less than a year after I got it, the
keyboard stopped accepting inputs, so I took it into the shop and smashed it
to smithereens with a hammer.

