Speaker 1: Get in tech with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer at
Speaker 1: how Stuff Works and I love all things tech. And
Speaker 1: in the last few episodes, I've covered the early days
Speaker 1: of personal computers now. I started with an episode dedicated
Speaker 1: to computer systems that were unable to establish a permanent
Speaker 1: foothold in the market, so ones that kind of rose up,
Speaker 1: and they were some of them were really really popular
Speaker 1: in the early days, but they weren't able to become
Speaker 1: a defining personal computer and they are no longer around today.
Speaker 1: You can't go out and buy a brand new one.
Speaker 1: You could buy emulators, you can buy recreations of them.
Speaker 1: You could probably find some of them on eBay, but
Speaker 1: you're not going to go and buy like a two
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen version of those machines anymore. Then I did
Speaker 1: a couple of episodes aka to how Apple managed to
Speaker 1: avoid that same fate. Obviously you can go out and
Speaker 1: buy an Apple computer. They're called Max now. But today
Speaker 1: we're going to turn our attention to IBM and its
Speaker 1: role in defining the modern PC. Because when we say PC,
Speaker 1: most of us mean a Windows based machine. People tend
Speaker 1: to call the two different types of computers out there,
Speaker 1: the two broad different types of computers out there, MAX
Speaker 1: or PCs, and when they say PC, they generally mean
Speaker 1: something that's running Windows. Now, that's obviously an over generalization.
Speaker 1: There are other operating systems out there. I've talked about
Speaker 1: that before. Their Unix, there's Linux distributions, there's all sorts
Speaker 1: of stuff. But for the average person, it comes down
Speaker 1: to a MAC or PC. So how did IBM end
Speaker 1: up defining what a PC is? And why isn't IBM
Speaker 1: still in that market? Well, before I dive in, I
Speaker 1: have to say that while I have used a ton
Speaker 1: of sources to put this show together, there was one
Speaker 1: that was more valuable than any of the others, and
Speaker 1: that was a series of articles, two articles actually written
Speaker 1: by Jimmy Maher for Ours Technica, and it's called the
Speaker 1: Complete History of the IBM PC, and it's fantastic. I
Speaker 1: highly recommend you read those articles to get a better
Speaker 1: idea about what was going on at this time. Now,
Speaker 1: IBM was a true powerhouse, a multibillion dollar company well
Speaker 1: before the PC era, and it behooves us to do
Speaker 1: a quick dive into IBMS history. I've done full episodes
Speaker 1: about the history of IBM. It is a long and
Speaker 1: complicated history. It's fascinating as well. I'm gonna give you
Speaker 1: sort of the cliffs notes version for this particular episode.
Speaker 1: So IBM traces its history back to the Computer Tabulating
Speaker 1: Record Company, which was founded in nineteen eleven, but even
Speaker 1: that doesn't really get back to the beginning of IBM. Sure,
Speaker 1: the Peuter Tabulating Record Company would eventually become IBM, but
Speaker 1: that company, that being Computer Tabulating Record Company, which will
Speaker 1: just call CTR, that gets way too to complicated. Otherwise,
Speaker 1: that was actually an amalgamation of other companies. It was
Speaker 1: a sort of a merger of three to four companies,
Speaker 1: depending upon how you look at it. So that includes
Speaker 1: the International Time Recording Company, the Computing Scale Company, and
Speaker 1: the Tabulating Machine Company, as well as the Bundy Manufacturing Company.
Speaker 1: And I'll get into why that gets a little complicated
Speaker 1: in just a second. So those companies, in turn have
Speaker 1: been around in one form or another since the late
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. So if you're really picky, you can say
Speaker 1: that IBM kind of traces its history back to before
Speaker 1: the turn of the twentieth century. The International Time Recording
Speaker 1: Company started off as the Bundy Manufacturing Company in the
Speaker 1: eighteen eighties in New York, and that was named after
Speaker 1: its founder, Willard L. Bundy, who invented and patented mechanical
Speaker 1: time recorders. Now technically, the manufacturing aspect of the Bundy
Speaker 1: Manufacturing Company remained sort of separate from everything else and
Speaker 1: was lumped in with this general merger that would form
Speaker 1: the predecessor to IBM. The Computer Scale Company launched in
Speaker 1: eight when two businessmen in Ohio had the notion to
Speaker 1: purchase some patents that were related to the computing scale
Speaker 1: technology that was brand new at the time, and they
Speaker 1: created an enterprise out of it. The Tabulating Machine Company
Speaker 1: was originally known as the hollow Earth Electric Tabulating System,
Speaker 1: named after Herman Hollowrath, its founder. In eighteen ninety six,
Speaker 1: Hollowrath formed the Tabulating Machine Company. His business really centered
Speaker 1: on punched card systems and readers, so not really computers,
Speaker 1: but tabulating devices that used punch cards to tabulate stuff.
Speaker 1: He had actually used that in an effort to streamline
Speaker 1: the process of going through the results from the US
Speaker 1: Census in eighteen nine at that stage, you had a
Speaker 1: population that was getting so big that figuring out what
Speaker 1: all the different results were took an enormous amount of
Speaker 1: time and a lot of hard work doing it all
Speaker 1: by hand. So he had come up with this more
Speaker 1: or less automated approach using punch cards and a machine
Speaker 1: capable of quickly reading those punch cards. Together, those companies
Speaker 1: merged into a new one in nineteen eleven through this
Speaker 1: stock amalgamation process. But that does not magically mean that
Speaker 1: everything will work smoothly, as I'm sure some of you
Speaker 1: have experienced firsthand if you've ever been through a merger,
Speaker 1: if you've worked for a company that has merged or
Speaker 1: acquired another company. Charles Randlet Flint was the guy who
Speaker 1: had headed these efforts. He was the man behind this
Speaker 1: stock amalgamation process emerging all the companies, and he realized
Speaker 1: that this massive beast he had created was a bit
Speaker 1: beyond his own abilities to lead. It had more than
Speaker 1: a thousand employees, and of course it had very diverse
Speaker 1: business processes across us the various businesses. The chairman for
Speaker 1: the new company was a guy named George Winthrop Fairchild.
Speaker 1: But Fairchild was also a congressman and so he was
Speaker 1: largely absent from the operations of the company. They needed
Speaker 1: to find somebody else. Eventually, a businessman named Thomas J. Watson,
Speaker 1: whose last name would go on to become the name
Speaker 1: of IBM s artificially intelligent application platform. Watson stepped up
Speaker 1: to Flint and said, Hey, I would like to get
Speaker 1: a job running a business. I feel like I really
Speaker 1: could do some great things. Watson had at that time
Speaker 1: whether a pretty rough storm due to being accused, tried,
Speaker 1: and initially convicted of unfair business practices essentially anti trust laws. Now,
Speaker 1: he would never end up serving out a prison sentence.
Speaker 1: The court would eventually overturn this conviction, but his reputation
Speaker 1: among the public despite this legal issue, was extremely strong.
Speaker 1: Was known as someone who was very supportive in the community.
Speaker 1: So while he had cutthroat business uh strategies and and instincts,
Speaker 1: he was also someone who would give back to the
Speaker 1: communities he belonged to. Flint would end up naming Watson
Speaker 1: the general manager for CTR, and a little less than
Speaker 1: a year later, when all the trial business was resolved,
Speaker 1: the board would name him the president of CTR. Now
Speaker 1: CTR would remain the name of the company until nineteen
Speaker 1: twenty four, when Watson would officially give it a new
Speaker 1: moniker International Business Machines or IBM. Throughout its history, it
Speaker 1: would primarily focus on business to business operations, so, in
Speaker 1: other words, IBM would make the machines that other businesses
Speaker 1: depended upon to get work done for their customers. IBM
Speaker 1: was not in the business of creating stuff for the
Speaker 1: average consumer. So when IBM was working on something, it
Speaker 1: wasn't for people like you and me. It was for
Speaker 1: big companies so that they could do the businesses that
Speaker 1: you know, whatever it was that they did, and so
Speaker 1: they might have a forward facing uh side to them
Speaker 1: where they would have contact with customers, but IBM didn't.
Speaker 1: Their customers were other companies. IBM grew larger and more
Speaker 1: powerful and became a leading name in business machines, and
Speaker 1: it all started with mechanical devices, but eventually transition to
Speaker 1: electronic and then microchip technologies. In the nineteen forties, IBM
Speaker 1: would partner with Harvard University to build the company's first computer,
Speaker 1: although most people refer to it as Harvard's first computer,
Speaker 1: known as the Mark one or the Automated Sequence Controlled Calculator.
Speaker 1: This was an enormous electro mechanical computer. So in other words,
Speaker 1: I had electric parts, electronic parts rather and mechanical parts.
Speaker 1: And it played a very important role with several war
Speaker 1: related calculations in the nineteen forties, including some designed by
Speaker 1: John von Neumann as part of the Manhattan Project. That's
Speaker 1: the project that developed the atomic bomb. It had seven
Speaker 1: hundred sixty five thousand components and more than one hundred
Speaker 1: miles of wire and cable. So obviously this was not
Speaker 1: a home computer, although I guess if you were desperate
Speaker 1: you could maybe cut a hole in it and make
Speaker 1: it a home but still not quite the same thing
Speaker 1: as what we mean when we say home computer. In
Speaker 1: ninety two, Thomas J. Watson Jr. Would become the president
Speaker 1: of IBM and thus began the golden age of the company.
Speaker 1: The engineers IBM did groundbreaking work, including creating the first
Speaker 1: commercial hard disk drive. By the nineteen sixties, IBM was
Speaker 1: a leader in producing massive computers for businesses to help
Speaker 1: them manage their data, and at this point, no one
Speaker 1: would dream of owning their own home computer. Even after
Speaker 1: the invention of the transistor, these machines were still pretty
Speaker 1: darn massive, and they would take up an entire a
Speaker 1: room of your house. In the early nineteen seventies, as
Speaker 1: the first computer hobbyists were experimenting with building their own
Speaker 1: basic computing machines for home use, IBM began to create
Speaker 1: a platform that would evolve into their own personal computer
Speaker 1: line of machines. A decade later, and IBM manager named
Speaker 1: Paul Friedel invented this platform, and it was called the
Speaker 1: Special Computer a p L Machine Portable or SCAMP. A
Speaker 1: PO by the way, stands for a programming language real
Speaker 1: descriptive there that was actually designed by Kenneth e Iverson
Speaker 1: back in the nineteen sixties. SCAMP was a research project
Speaker 1: meant to create a single user computer. Now, computers in
Speaker 1: those days were generally meant for multiple users. This was
Speaker 1: the main frame approach. You would have a centralized, very
Speaker 1: powerful mainframe computer, and you would have one or more
Speaker 1: terminals connected to that mainframe. Typically you would have more
Speaker 1: than one, and these terminals acted as a point of
Speaker 1: communication between the users and the computers processing units, which
Speaker 1: weren't really microchips at this point. They were typically large
Speaker 1: circuit boards. These computers used a strategy called time sharing,
Speaker 1: which gave the illusion that everyone was working on this
Speaker 1: mainframe simultaneously, but in actuality the computer would switch from
Speaker 1: one terminal to another to run processes, but it would
Speaker 1: do so at a rate that was fast enough to
Speaker 1: at least give the implication that everyone was working on
Speaker 1: the same machine simultaneously rather than sequentially. SCAMP was a
Speaker 1: departure from this model. Two IBM laboratories in Silicon Valley,
Speaker 1: the IBM Scientific Center and the Advanced Systems Development Lab,
Speaker 1: were top secret and given an open sandbox to play
Speaker 1: in to develop new technologies that could potentially be commercially useful. So,
Speaker 1: in other words, the engineers at these centers didn't have
Speaker 1: to worry about improving existing systems or making the next
Speaker 1: big computer that IBM was going to sell. They could
Speaker 1: instead think further out and experiment with different concepts that
Speaker 1: had no real place in the market at that time
Speaker 1: but could potentially be valuable later on. And SCAMP grew
Speaker 1: out of that environment. In nineteen two, Dr Paul Friedl,
Speaker 1: who was a manager at the Scientific Center, wanted to
Speaker 1: build a personal portable IBM computer, meaning a single use
Speaker 1: computer that you can move from place to place. Dr
Speaker 1: Friedel made a plan to build SCAMP within six months
Speaker 1: and then have it ready to demonstrate to IBM executives.
Speaker 1: The executives, when presented with the idea, said wouldn't that
Speaker 1: be something, which became scamps motto. Another IBM employee named
Speaker 1: Joe George headed up the hardware team to build SCAMP.
Speaker 1: With six months to start and finish and demo a project,
Speaker 1: the team was under the gun to prove their concept
Speaker 1: was tenable, so they didn't really have much of a choice.
Speaker 1: They decided to go with many off the shelf components
Speaker 1: because there just wasn't time to develop everything in house
Speaker 1: from scratch. The whole point was to demonstrate if the
Speaker 1: concept was possible after all, not to create a product
Speaker 1: that would ever see the light of day outside of IBM.
Speaker 1: Six months after those initial discussions, the team actually did
Speaker 1: have something to show off to IBM executives. The SCAMP
Speaker 1: was in a case that resembled a briefcase, had a keyboard,
Speaker 1: it had a CRT display, and used a cassette tape
Speaker 1: drive for media storage. So, in other words, this machine
Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy three was already taking a form factor
Speaker 1: that wouldn't be seen in the hobbyist world. For another
Speaker 1: couple of years. The team gave multiple demonstrations of the
Speaker 1: SCAMP concept at IBM and received a lot of interest.
Speaker 1: At the final demonstration, the one that was going to
Speaker 1: decide the fate of pursuing a single user computer strategy,
Speaker 1: it happened here in my hometown of Atlanta, Georgia, at
Speaker 1: the Marriott Downtown. Dr Friedel even tells a great story
Speaker 1: about this, how he showed up late to the demonstration
Speaker 1: because he got lost on the highway because, as he
Speaker 1: said in the video, there are just too many roads
Speaker 1: in Atlanta called Peach Tree, which is absolutely true. Despite
Speaker 1: his late arrival, the demonstration went really well. Dr Freedle
Speaker 1: showed off SCAMP to the IBM president, who at that
Speaker 1: time was John Opele. The demo went off without any glitches.
Speaker 1: They didn't have any hardware failures or software hang ups,
Speaker 1: nothing like that. Following the demonstration was a presentation about
Speaker 1: how much money it would cost to fund the project.
Speaker 1: Opal was so impressed he said, if it was up
Speaker 1: to me, I'd go four and a half million dollars
Speaker 1: over the budget you're asking for. And that was enough
Speaker 1: for Dr Freedle to secure a commitment to move forward.
Speaker 1: SCAMP would become the starting point of the path that
Speaker 1: would eventually lead to the IBM fIF fifty a k a.
Speaker 1: The IBM Personal Computer. SCAMP, by the way, would eventually
Speaker 1: emerge from the depths of IBM's secret laboratories. It became
Speaker 1: part of a Smithsonian exhibit on information technology and went
Speaker 1: on display to the public. But we're not quite at
Speaker 1: the IBM PC era yet. IBM had a couple of
Speaker 1: other computers in the one hundred line that would precede
Speaker 1: the first personal computer from the company, and the first
Speaker 1: of those, the actual IBMFT, was quite the beast. IBM
Speaker 1: started selling this descendant of the Scamp in nineteen five,
Speaker 1: a year before Apple would debut, and around the same
Speaker 1: time the hobbyists were getting their hands on the Altaire
Speaker 1: eight hundred. I've got a lot more to say about
Speaker 1: the IBM in just a second, but first let's take
Speaker 1: a quick break to thank our sponsor. The IBM was
Speaker 1: not a computer built for the home user, but rather
Speaker 1: for engineers and mathematicians. It was called a portable computer,
Speaker 1: but you really probably wouldn't want to lug it around
Speaker 1: because it weighed about fifty five pounds, or wasn't just
Speaker 1: bulky it was a little peculiar. Rather than relying on
Speaker 1: a microprocessor to act as CPU, spread processor duties across
Speaker 1: an entire circuit board using an IBM developed technology called
Speaker 1: palm p a l M. It had sixteen kilobytes of
Speaker 1: RAM at its base model, and it used a tape
Speaker 1: drive for storing media and loading programs. It had a
Speaker 1: five inch computer screen and a keyboard, and it would
Speaker 1: set you back about ten thousand dollars. Like I said,
Speaker 1: these were not intended as computers for the home. This
Speaker 1: was for people who were doing scientific research or engineering,
Speaker 1: so it was not some thing that you're going to
Speaker 1: play games on. It just didn't follow the main frame
Speaker 1: terminal form factor that you had seen in previous computers
Speaker 1: from IBM. So this was a very specific use computer.
Speaker 1: The idea being scientists in the field or mathematicians who
Speaker 1: needed to have a computer that they could potentially bring
Speaker 1: to another location and not just have in a big
Speaker 1: research laboratory. IBM would refine their design in two updates.
Speaker 1: There was the IBM fifty one ten and the IBM
Speaker 1: fifty one twenty. These were general office computers, so no
Speaker 1: longer scientific research machines, but office machines. They were marketed
Speaker 1: as being the machines the company would invest in in
Speaker 1: order to do stuff like accounting, or data management or
Speaker 1: word processing. IBM announced the fifty one ten in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy eight, and it could support more peripherals than could
Speaker 1: the one that came out before it, including a peripheral
Speaker 1: called the IBM fifty one fourteen would was an external
Speaker 1: dual eight inch floppy drive, so floppy disk drive that
Speaker 1: could take eight inch floppy disks. You might not remember
Speaker 1: that there were such things. They weren't really used in
Speaker 1: personal computers. They were used in these business machines, and
Speaker 1: by the time the personal computer floppy discs came around,
Speaker 1: they were more frequently the five and a quarter size
Speaker 1: and then later on three and a half inch size.
Speaker 1: The entry level fifty one ten, which supported the Basic
Speaker 1: programming language only and had sixteen kilobytes of RAM, would
Speaker 1: cost eight thousand, four hundred seventy five dollars. But if
Speaker 1: you wanted a top of the line sixty four kilobyte
Speaker 1: machine capable of running both Basic and the a p
Speaker 1: L programming language, that would set you back fifteen thousand,
Speaker 1: seven hundred twenty five dollars. The computer had an all
Speaker 1: in one form factor. The keyboard and display were all
Speaker 1: part of the case. The display screen was still five
Speaker 1: inches and it was monochromatic, and it still relied on
Speaker 1: the processor, that circuit board processor that had twenty followed
Speaker 1: in the winter of Night, and it was another all
Speaker 1: in one machine with a keyboard and monitor all part
Speaker 1: of the same case. It also shipped with two floppy
Speaker 1: disk drives standard they accepted those eight inch floppy disks
Speaker 1: I talked about a second ago. The display, however, was larger.
Speaker 1: It measured nine inches, and the components in the twenty
Speaker 1: made the heavy heaviest desktop computer ever was a massive heavyweight.
Speaker 1: It weighed a hundred and five pounds or forty eight ms.
Speaker 1: The full computer system included not just the computer, which
Speaker 1: was technically a fifteen Model three, but also an external
Speaker 1: diskette unit and a dot Matrix printer. So the price
Speaker 1: range for that computer system, because keep in minds more
Speaker 1: than just that one computer started at nine thousand, three
Speaker 1: forty dollars, and if you wanted to completely tricked out,
Speaker 1: it would go all the way up to twenty three thousand,
Speaker 1: nine hundred ninety bucks for that computer system. Yikes. Now
Speaker 1: that line of computers at least a name would continue
Speaker 1: to the fifty one fifty PC which was released in
Speaker 1: But before that, there's another computer from IBM that I
Speaker 1: need to mention, and it was not part of the line,
Speaker 1: but was an important step toward the personal computer. And
Speaker 1: this was the System slash twenty three Data Master or
Speaker 1: just data Master for short, and I think that's an
Speaker 1: awesome name for a computer. The Data Master was the
Speaker 1: first desktop computer designed by IBM to feature a microprocessor
Speaker 1: instead of that circuit board with the Palm processor that
Speaker 1: IBM had been using. The Data Master had an Intel
Speaker 1: eight eighty five as its central processing unit. Like the
Speaker 1: fifty one twenty, it was heavy. It weighed ninety five
Speaker 1: pounds or forty three kilo rams. Now, despite the fact
Speaker 1: that it weighed so much and that it was meant
Speaker 1: for an office environment, the fact it had a micro
Speaker 1: processor and it meant that technically speaking, it fell into
Speaker 1: the category of micro computer. While IBM announced the Data
Speaker 1: Master in nineteen seventy eight, the computer didn't debut until July.
Speaker 1: IBM would announce the PC just a month later, which
Speaker 1: sort of resulted in folks forgetting about the Data Master.
Speaker 1: Between the Data Master's announcement and when it launched, something
Speaker 1: else interesting happened. IBM got a little visit from a
Speaker 1: company called Atari. At this stage, Atari had already launched
Speaker 1: the VCS game system that's essentially they hundred, and it
Speaker 1: had also launched the Atari four hundred and Atari eight
Speaker 1: hundred computer systems. You can listen to the computers that
Speaker 1: time forgot to learn more about those. Anyway. Atari made
Speaker 1: a move to suggest that it could design a computer
Speaker 1: for the home market on behalf of IBM, saying, hey,
Speaker 1: you guys are really in there when it comes to
Speaker 1: businesses and research facilities and and government installations and all
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. If you want to get into
Speaker 1: the home higher us, we can totally build that computer
Speaker 1: for you, guys. The chairman of IBM at that time
Speaker 1: was a guy named Frank Carey, and he relaid the
Speaker 1: offer to a fellow named Bill Low that was ibm
Speaker 1: s director of Entry Systems. Low took it to a
Speaker 1: management committee and collectively they decided that this proposal from
Speaker 1: Atari was bonkers. I might be paraphrasing a little bit,
Speaker 1: but the management team also knew that the chairman was
Speaker 1: really interested in this idea, so they told Low he
Speaker 1: should go form a team, come up with a proposal
Speaker 1: for an IBM personal computer that did not involve Atari
Speaker 1: at all, and then submit that to the committee within
Speaker 1: a month. So Low went out and formed a team
Speaker 1: out of about a dozen or so engineers to work
Speaker 1: on this project. He also contacted Bill Gates and Steve
Speaker 1: Bamber of Microsoft to discuss their collaboration and a hypothetical
Speaker 1: personal computer. This was a big deal for Microsoft, which
Speaker 1: was already a successful company but stood to receive substantial
Speaker 1: benefits if IBM were to partner with them. Here was
Speaker 1: this corporate giant leader in the industry, something that had
Speaker 1: been around for essentially a century if you trace the
Speaker 1: history back to the predecessor companies at any rate, and
Speaker 1: they were reaching out to what was effectively a startup
Speaker 1: software company that wasn't even a decade old yet. Bill
Speaker 1: Gates met with a guy named Jack Sam's who was
Speaker 1: IBM's head of software development, and together they talked about
Speaker 1: the PC market. Sam's was really interested in that Gates
Speaker 1: had his finger on the pulse of that market, and
Speaker 1: he talked about the trends that were emerging in this
Speaker 1: still very young Field. Sam's reported back to Low and
Speaker 1: the rest of the team, and they put together a
Speaker 1: proposal for I b M personal computers. The proposal identified
Speaker 1: Intel as the best source for microchip processors. At the time,
Speaker 1: most personal computers were depending upon one of two major chips.
Speaker 1: There was the six zero two from Most Technologies, which
Speaker 1: was owned by Commodore, or the Z eight from Zylog.
Speaker 1: But these chips were already starting to brush up against
Speaker 1: their technical limitations, and IBM wanted a system that would
Speaker 1: not immediately be too underpowered to run the latest software.
Speaker 1: They wanted to future proof a little bit, so they
Speaker 1: went with the Intel eight chip as the CPU. This
Speaker 1: was more expensive, but it was also more powerful than
Speaker 1: the other microchips available in the market. The team also
Speaker 1: opted to go for a modular approach with the fifty
Speaker 1: one fifty. By modular approach, some people would call this
Speaker 1: an open architecture. The computer they created started as a
Speaker 1: foundation upon which the customer could build the machine he
Speaker 1: or she needed, using essentially interchangeable components. So a lot
Speaker 1: of computers that were on the market, what you saw
Speaker 1: was what you got. They might have some expansion slots
Speaker 1: and you could perhaps put some additional cards in those
Speaker 1: expansion slots, but generally speaking, you couldn't really swap out
Speaker 1: components easily. IBM wanted to go a different way. They
Speaker 1: wanted to have a sort of a bare foundation upon
Speaker 1: which you could build whatever computer you wanted. Uh. This
Speaker 1: was a really radical notion, and it meant that the
Speaker 1: customer could end up buying a computer graphics card that
Speaker 1: would support color graphics, or maybe they wanted to save
Speaker 1: some money or have a higher resolution so they go
Speaker 1: with a monochromatic video card. They would have the option
Speaker 1: to do that with IBMS approach, they weren't forced down
Speaker 1: one path or the other. The same was true for
Speaker 1: how much RAM the computer would have, the type and
Speaker 1: number of storage drives attached to it, and more. This
Speaker 1: proposal got the official approval, and then the team was
Speaker 1: hit by a very tough deadline. They were told to
Speaker 1: get a product ready for the market within a year.
Speaker 1: The team sourced many of these parts from other companies.
Speaker 1: Now that sped up their process considerably. If they had
Speaker 1: tried to develop all the different components within IBM, they
Speaker 1: never would have made that year deadline. They were also
Speaker 1: given a ton of autonomy as a Business Group. IBM
Speaker 1: had recently instituted this new strategy called independent business Units,
Speaker 1: in which teams within such units could operate almost like
Speaker 1: they were a separate startup company, and IBM was kind
Speaker 1: of acting like a venture capital funding source, like they
Speaker 1: were actually providing the money for this unit to get
Speaker 1: work done, but the unit itself would be very much
Speaker 1: autonomous in the decisions that would make The project got
Speaker 1: a code name called Project Chess, and the personal computer's
Speaker 1: code name became the Acorn, which had no relation to
Speaker 1: the actual personal computer on the market that also was
Speaker 1: called Acorn. One thing that stades a challenge to the
Speaker 1: team was the matter of which programming languages and operating
Speaker 1: systems should this machine support. Now Sam's, the head of
Speaker 1: software development, knew he wanted support for Basic and Microsoft
Speaker 1: was the most well known and reliable name in various
Speaker 1: flavors of Basic. It wasn't that Microsoft was the only
Speaker 1: purveyor of Basic, but they were the go to. So
Speaker 1: Sam's went back to meet with Bill Gates and talk
Speaker 1: about working with IBM on this project and essentially officially
Speaker 1: saying we're going to make an IBM personal computer, which
Speaker 1: was no big surprise at that point, everyone at Microsoft
Speaker 1: had figured this out. They had also all been made
Speaker 1: to sign various nondisclosure agreements so they couldn't talk about it,
Speaker 1: but it was a big deal for Microsoft. And then
Speaker 1: Sam said he was also interested in the disc operating
Speaker 1: System or DOSS known as CP slash M because it
Speaker 1: supported a lot business oriented software. So remember I mentioned
Speaker 1: there were two different major microprocessors and personal computers at
Speaker 1: that point, there were six five O two processors and
Speaker 1: Z A D processors. CPM disc operating system was compatible
Speaker 1: with the z A D processor, but not the six
Speaker 1: five O two and also not the eight from Intel.
Speaker 1: But it did already have a great deal of business
Speaker 1: software that had been programmed for that operating system. So
Speaker 1: there were a lot of different companies out there that
Speaker 1: depended on those various software packages. They needed a computer
Speaker 1: that could run that, so IBM definitely wanted to make
Speaker 1: sure that their computer was going to be compatible with
Speaker 1: that kind of software. They wanted to have that that
Speaker 1: foundation there so that it would be easier to sell
Speaker 1: these computers to potential customers. Sam's thought originally that Microsoft
Speaker 1: owned CP slash M because Microsoft had shipped copies of
Speaker 1: that operating system along with a hardware chip one of
Speaker 1: the few pieces of hardware that Microsoft actually was involved with,
Speaker 1: and that was called the soft card. The soft card
Speaker 1: was designed for the Apple Too. The soft card had
Speaker 1: a z A D CPU on it that was compatible
Speaker 1: with that disc operating system CP slash M. Now, again,
Speaker 1: Apple's microprocessor was a six five oh two from most technologies,
Speaker 1: it was not compatible with this version of DOSS. But
Speaker 1: if you were to slot in a soft card into
Speaker 1: an Apple to expansion slot, then you could boot into
Speaker 1: the machine using the z A D CPU instead of
Speaker 1: the Apple's normal CPU, and then you could run this
Speaker 1: version of DOSS just fine. And that meant that the
Speaker 1: Apple Too would become a really powerful computer because not
Speaker 1: only could you run it for all the applications that
Speaker 1: were designed specifically for the Apple, which involved a lot
Speaker 1: of educational software and games, you could then boot it
Speaker 1: into this other form and then you could run business
Speaker 1: software on it. It made the Apple to really, really attractive,
Speaker 1: and that's one of the reasons why it maintained its
Speaker 1: position in the market for so long, even though it
Speaker 1: was running on an increasingly aging microprocessor. Well, IBM one
Speaker 1: of this too, but they couldn't just run CP slash
Speaker 1: M DOSS on their machines. They needed to be able
Speaker 1: to get a version of this DOSS that would be
Speaker 1: compatible with the microprocessor they were using, the eight from Intel.
Speaker 1: But then they found out that Microsoft didn't own this
Speaker 1: operating system at all. They had actually been licensing the
Speaker 1: operating system from another company called Digital Research. At first,
Speaker 1: IBM tried to work out a deal with Digital Research
Speaker 1: to license the operating system for IBM s personal computer,
Speaker 1: but there were various breakdowns in negotiations, and exactly what
Speaker 1: happened is not entirely clear because the various parties that
Speaker 1: were involved have conflicting accounts, like wildly conflicting accounts of
Speaker 1: what actually happened. In the end, IBM left Digital Research
Speaker 1: without an agreement in place to have that cpf CP
Speaker 1: slash M DOSS running on their machines, and Sam's was
Speaker 1: desperate to find an alternative. Now, IBM was not the
Speaker 1: only party interested in creating a disc operating system that
Speaker 1: was compatible with this Intel eight eight chip. There's another
Speaker 1: guy named Tom Paterson of Seattle Computer Products. He had
Speaker 1: the same problem. He wanted to create a version of
Speaker 1: this DISC operating system that would work on an Intel
Speaker 1: eight or eight eight six based computer. The company you
Speaker 1: worked for, Seattle Computer Products, was a frequent collaborator with Microsoft.
Speaker 1: So Paterson goes to work on creating this disc operating
Speaker 1: system that would run on Intel chips. And he took
Speaker 1: the reference man ULL for the CP slash M version
Speaker 1: of DOSS, and then he reverse engineered DOSS for these
Speaker 1: other microchips. He said, well, here's what this version of
Speaker 1: DOSS does. How can I do that for this other
Speaker 1: type of microprocessor. He called his build q DOSS that
Speaker 1: stood for a Quick and Dirty operating system. Peterson actually
Speaker 1: would reach out to Bill Gates. He had no idea
Speaker 1: that Gates have been talking to IBM at all. He
Speaker 1: didn't know that IBM was interested in making a personal computer.
Speaker 1: He just wanted to talk to Gates about this new
Speaker 1: operating system he had built in the hopes that Microsoft
Speaker 1: might show interest in developing software for the operating system,
Speaker 1: so that way it would create a demand for this
Speaker 1: version of the OS, and then he would be able
Speaker 1: to sell this version of the OS to other companies.
Speaker 1: Gates saw q DOSS as the solution for ibm s woes,
Speaker 1: but he didn't let Peterson know about it. He report
Speaker 1: it ly contacted Sam's over at IBM and asked him
Speaker 1: if Big Blue that's the nickname for IBM, wanted to
Speaker 1: purchase this operating system for themselves or if Microsoft should
Speaker 1: look into it. And Sam's made a call that would
Speaker 1: end up being both the beginning and the end of
Speaker 1: IBMS foray into personal computing. He said, you guys take
Speaker 1: care of it. Whoof In retrospect, this, paired with the
Speaker 1: decision to go with off the shelf components, is the
Speaker 1: reason why IBM is not still in the personal computer market.
Speaker 1: If IBM had bought the operating system, this story would
Speaker 1: be incredibly different. Instead, Microsoft ultimately would get it. Now
Speaker 1: explain why this ended up creating the PC world we
Speaker 1: have now and just a little bit, but ultimately Microsoft
Speaker 1: would be responsible for delivering an operating system and support
Speaker 1: for four programming languages for this ran new IBM personal computer,
Speaker 1: and now those languages were Basic, Cobal for Tran, and Pascal.
Speaker 1: They also promised to make software for this new computer
Speaker 1: system and give it a bit of a library upon launch,
Speaker 1: since a home computer is ultimately only as useful as
Speaker 1: the software it has at its disposal. In return, IBM
Speaker 1: would pay a licensing fee to Microsoft, giving a portion
Speaker 1: of each sale to Microsoft as a royalty. The two
Speaker 1: companies made their partnerships formal by signing a contract on
Speaker 1: November six. By this time, people like Low and Sam's
Speaker 1: have been moved to other projects inside IBM, and there
Speaker 1: was a new leader of Project Chess who was brought
Speaker 1: on at this stage. This is one of those other
Speaker 1: issues that IBM had at times where it was such
Speaker 1: a big company and there were so many different things
Speaker 1: going on that often people would get shuffled around. And
Speaker 1: sometimes that was great. Sometimes it was exactly what a
Speaker 1: project needed in order to get a boost of energy
Speaker 1: and keep going. In other cases it created a moment
Speaker 1: of chaos where everyone had to figure out what they
Speaker 1: were doing and where they were going, and how their
Speaker 1: actions were going to affect the overall projects. So it
Speaker 1: was very complicated. Meanwhile, Gates was working on a deal
Speaker 1: that would end up benefiting Microsoft at the expense of
Speaker 1: both IBM and s c. P. Peterson still did not
Speaker 1: know that Gates was talking to IBM at all, or
Speaker 1: that IBM was interested in q Doss. He had continued
Speaker 1: to work on the operating system himself independently, and he
Speaker 1: had refined it, and he also renamed it. It was
Speaker 1: no longer the Quick and Dirty operating system. It was
Speaker 1: the eighty six DOSS, named after the eight eight six
Speaker 1: Intel chip with which the operating system was compatible. It
Speaker 1: was also compatible with because they were built on similar architectures.
Speaker 1: Microsoft proposed a deal with SCP. Microsoft would go out
Speaker 1: and get clients for the eight six DOS operating system
Speaker 1: and they would pay SCP a ten thousand dollar licensing
Speaker 1: fee per agreement, or fifteen thousand dollars if the agreement
Speaker 1: included the source code for eight six DOSS. Microsoft also
Speaker 1: made a ten thousand dollar investment in SCP, so SEP agreed.
Speaker 1: They did not know that Microsoft had only one license
Speaker 1: in mind, and that was IBM. SCP thought that Microsoft
Speaker 1: had lined up a whole bunch of different clients and
Speaker 1: then they were just gonna see license fee after a
Speaker 1: license fee roll in. But Microsoft really just had one.
Speaker 1: So for twenty five thousand dollars, Microsoft got access to
Speaker 1: the operating system that IBM desperately wanted. Eventually, Microsoft would
Speaker 1: hire Peterson away from SCP, and at that point when
Speaker 1: he moved over to Microsoft, he was finally let in
Speaker 1: on the secret that IBM was the big client. He
Speaker 1: also began to edit eighty six DOSS according to some
Speaker 1: changes that I b M wanted in the operating system
Speaker 1: to make it closer to the CP slash M DISC
Speaker 1: operating system that they had wanted in the first place,
Speaker 1: which Peterson was not crazy about. He did not like
Speaker 1: the idea of making his product even more like a
Speaker 1: thing that some people would accuse him of stealing. Later,
Speaker 1: a magazine called info World published an article in June
Speaker 1: night one, a couple of months before IBM made the
Speaker 1: big announcement about this personal computer, and they they leaked
Speaker 1: the project. Someone had clearly talked to a person over
Speaker 1: an info World and in the piece the author said
Speaker 1: that IBM planned to show off the PC in July,
Speaker 1: which turned out to be wrong. IBM wasn't ready until August,
Speaker 1: but the data Master did come out in July one,
Speaker 1: and that caused a bit of confusion because people thought, oh,
Speaker 1: this must have been the computer. The info World mentioned
Speaker 1: it wasn't, but it was in some ways similar to
Speaker 1: the IBM PC, and that it was the first of
Speaker 1: IBMS micro computers to actually have a micro processor on it. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: back at SCP, that company was reeling. They were facing
Speaker 1: hard times. They were only getting They had only received
Speaker 1: ten thousand or twenty dollars total from Microsoft for the
Speaker 1: licensing fees. They The string of fees they had expected
Speaker 1: to collect didn't happen. Also, Paterson had left the company,
Speaker 1: so they're head software developer was gone. The hardware they
Speaker 1: were making was not in demand, so they were really
Speaker 1: having a hard time. Gates made an offer that the
Speaker 1: company could not refuse, which was Microsoft would purchase the
Speaker 1: eight six DOSS operating system outright for fifty thou dollars
Speaker 1: and then grant SCP and exclusive license for the operating system.
Speaker 1: SCP was in no real position to negotiate, and they
Speaker 1: agreed to this deal, which essentially flipped things between Microsoft
Speaker 1: an SCP. Microsoft became the sole owner of eight six DOSS,
Speaker 1: which the company quickly rebranded and called MS DOSS. So
Speaker 1: if you've ever heard of an MS DOS machine, technically
Speaker 1: that was a machine that was running an operating system
Speaker 1: that had been developed by a totally different company that
Speaker 1: was just tightly coupled with Microsoft. Now I have more
Speaker 1: to say about the IBM PC and how that led
Speaker 1: into the IBM compatible and clone era in just a minute.
Speaker 1: But first let's take another quick break to thank our sponsor.
Speaker 1: As the IBM PC got closer to an official release,
Speaker 1: Digital Research set, hang on that MS DOS operating system
Speaker 1: you've got there looks an awful lot like r CP
Speaker 1: slash M operating system. So there was even the possibility
Speaker 1: of legal action coming up. Digital Research was looking at
Speaker 1: the post ability of suing Um, Microsoft and IBM. Now
Speaker 1: IBM was able to soothe the company by stating that
Speaker 1: they were still interested in licensing a version of CP
Speaker 1: slash M that was compatible with the micro processor and said, hey, hey,
Speaker 1: if you just make a version of the thing you
Speaker 1: make that works on the computers we're making, we will
Speaker 1: totally pay you. And Digital Research was reassured and said
Speaker 1: it would do that, it would deliver upon that request,
Speaker 1: and this would make the IBM PC have four potential
Speaker 1: operating systems, which is pretty crazy. The basic model of
Speaker 1: the IBM PC, as it was finally announced in August one,
Speaker 1: cost one thousand, five hundred sixty five dollars That included
Speaker 1: a machine with sixteen kilobytes of RAM and a floppy drive,
Speaker 1: and it would run basic hosted in the computers read
Speaker 1: only memory or ROM. Now, if you kick it out
Speaker 1: an IBM fifty one fifty two its full potential, it
Speaker 1: would cost closer to six thousand dollars. This is pretty
Speaker 1: much how PCs shake out today. You typically have a
Speaker 1: spectrum of options you can choose from, starting with the
Speaker 1: entry level and working up to LEAT status. On launch,
Speaker 1: you could opt to have MS DOSS or u c
Speaker 1: SD Pascal loaded onto your machine for an extra fee.
Speaker 1: That CP slash M operating system from Digital Research would
Speaker 1: lag behind for six more months before it was finally
Speaker 1: available for the platform, and when it did become available,
Speaker 1: IBM was offering it for the princely sum of two
Speaker 1: hundred forty dollars. That would lead Digital Research to say, hey,
Speaker 1: you were pricing us out of the market because MS
Speaker 1: dos cost like forty bucks. You probaced us at two
Speaker 1: hundred forty, so you were specifically doing it so that
Speaker 1: people wouldn't buy our stuff, but they would buy MS DOSS.
Speaker 1: IBM said, no, that wasn't why we we set the
Speaker 1: price at that level. Your licensing fees were so high
Speaker 1: that that was the level we had to charge if
Speaker 1: we wanted to make any sort of profit, and this
Speaker 1: argument went back and forth. It never really got nice.
Speaker 1: It was pretty acrimonious. The market would play out in
Speaker 1: such a way that MS DOS would eventually become the
Speaker 1: clear front runner of those four operating systems. Moreover, Microsoft,
Speaker 1: because of its ownership of ms DOSS, could license out
Speaker 1: that operating system to other computer manufacturers, not just IBM.
Speaker 1: Not all of those computers would have software or hardware
Speaker 1: compatibility with IBM machines, So that makes things a little
Speaker 1: more confusing. So you had IBM compatibles and IBM clones,
Speaker 1: but you also had other computers that were running ms DOS,
Speaker 1: but we're not technically compatible with IBM machines. And IBM
Speaker 1: had relied so heavily on off the shelf components that
Speaker 1: minute was possible to recreate, at least from a hardware perspective,
Speaker 1: the IBM personal Computer. You could go out if you
Speaker 1: were a manufacturer, and you could get the AI pieces,
Speaker 1: the same components that IBM was using because they were
Speaker 1: using so many off the shelf components, and you could
Speaker 1: build your own version of what the IBM PC was.
Speaker 1: There was one thing that IBM had going for it
Speaker 1: that was proprietary and that was the basic Input output
Speaker 1: system or BIOS. This is sort of the the base
Speaker 1: level where the various input and output components of your
Speaker 1: computer communicate with the computer's processor, so things like you know,
Speaker 1: all the basic stuff. Every way you put information into
Speaker 1: the computer, in every way the computer sends information back
Speaker 1: to you, it passes through this layer. And IBM had
Speaker 1: its own BIOS, so that was one thing that differentiated
Speaker 1: it from all other competitors on the market, and that
Speaker 1: was proprietary. However, numerous companies decided they wanted to try
Speaker 1: and create a clone of IBM PCs, so they started
Speaker 1: to reverse engineer the BIOS in order to create their
Speaker 1: own computers would run similar to the IBM pc US.
Speaker 1: Courts in general have ruled that reverse engineering is not
Speaker 1: the same thing as copying. Copying involves getting access to
Speaker 1: the source code of something and then line by line
Speaker 1: copying it down so that you have your own version.
Speaker 1: That's illegal. That's considered intellectual property theft. You're you're violating copyright.
Speaker 1: But if you see a program and you see what
Speaker 1: the program is doing, like you see what the output is,
Speaker 1: and then you try to create your own software that
Speaker 1: does the same thing, like you put the same input
Speaker 1: in and you get the same output back. If you
Speaker 1: do that on your own without copying the original, then
Speaker 1: you could say, well, yeah, I get the same result,
Speaker 1: but I did it my way. I didn't I didn't
Speaker 1: copy anyone else, and u S courts in general have
Speaker 1: said that's legitte. If you reverse engineer what someone else
Speaker 1: has done and you're not copying them, like you didn't
Speaker 1: actually go in and look at how the nuts and
Speaker 1: bolts work, then that that can stand in the market.
Speaker 1: That doesn't count as copying. Computers like the Commodore sixty
Speaker 1: four and the TRS e D we're aging out of
Speaker 1: the market at this stage. The rise of the IBM
Speaker 1: PC and Microsoft's ability to create software for the platform
Speaker 1: made the IBM PC a much more powerful competitor. They
Speaker 1: just the fact that they were having software that was
Speaker 1: appealing not just to the home user but two businesses
Speaker 1: made it a really attractive computer platform. Computers like the
Speaker 1: Tandy two thousand, which could run ms DOSS, were not
Speaker 1: fully compatible with IBM PCs and really could only run
Speaker 1: a subset of the same programs that IBM machines could,
Speaker 1: and that was largely due to micro process or architecture,
Speaker 1: so IBM had decided to go with the eight. Now
Speaker 1: that that had some limitations to it, other companies decided, hey,
Speaker 1: we can compete with I b M by using faster microprocessors,
Speaker 1: and those will be able to support more RAM than
Speaker 1: IBM S machines can, and therefore we can make computers
Speaker 1: that have better specs than IBM does. The problem was
Speaker 1: the operating system MS DOSS was compatible with those less
Speaker 1: powerful chips, but not necessarily compatible with more powerful chips,
Speaker 1: or at least not to the level where you could
Speaker 1: run all the different types of software. So yes, you
Speaker 1: would technically have a computer that was more powerful than
Speaker 1: the IBM PC, but you would have fewer examples of
Speaker 1: software that you could actually run on that computer, so
Speaker 1: it's utility was not as great as the IBM PC.
Speaker 1: In this way, IBM was able to set the standard
Speaker 1: for what a PC was. Uh As IBM went that way,
Speaker 1: so did Microsoft with their MS DOSS revisions, and IBM
Speaker 1: set the pace. So for a while that was the case.
Speaker 1: It was that IBM was the de facto standard, and
Speaker 1: other companies would try and make computers that met that standard.
Speaker 1: But we're less expensive or had some other differentiator that
Speaker 1: would make them more attractive than IBM's official machines. It
Speaker 1: didn't help that IBM made a couple of mistakes along
Speaker 1: the way, where there were a couple of personal computers
Speaker 1: that ended up getting really bad reviews. But a lot
Speaker 1: of IBM machines were really good machines. They were also
Speaker 1: fairly expensive machines, but they again, that was the company
Speaker 1: that got to set the tone and everyone else had
Speaker 1: to sort of play along. Tandy was not one of
Speaker 1: those companies. Tandy was creating computers that were technically superior
Speaker 1: in many ways to the IBM machines at the time,
Speaker 1: but again they suffered for it by not being able
Speaker 1: to run as much of the software, so it ended
Speaker 1: up not helping Tandy in the long run, and they
Speaker 1: would eventually get out of that game. Still, more and
Speaker 1: more manufacturers began to create computers that followed ibm s lead,
Speaker 1: and that created a full industry of IBM clones or
Speaker 1: compatible So if you've ever heard the term IBM compatible,
Speaker 1: what that meant was it was made by a company
Speaker 1: that was not IBM, but using similar hardware and software
Speaker 1: and bios that would allow it to run the same
Speaker 1: software that would run on an IBM machine. And because
Speaker 1: IBM had used all these off the shelf pieces, and
Speaker 1: because people could reverse engineer the bios, and because MS
Speaker 1: DOSS could license or Microsoft rather it could license ms
Speaker 1: DOS to any company it wanted to. Because IBM to
Speaker 1: not own the operating system, it meant that IBM had
Speaker 1: managed to create its own competitors in the marketplace. This
Speaker 1: was great for the end consumer. If you were someone
Speaker 1: who was shopping around for a computer, it was great
Speaker 1: because there were a lot of different opportunities out there
Speaker 1: that had really affordable machines that could run similar programs
Speaker 1: to IBM s. But it was not so great for IBM.
Speaker 1: If they had maintained ownership of the operating system, it
Speaker 1: would have been an entirely different story. IBM would have
Speaker 1: not just set the tone, they would be the dominant
Speaker 1: factor in personal computers because they'd be the only game
Speaker 1: in town that could actually use that operating system. Someone
Speaker 1: else would have had to have come up with a
Speaker 1: different operating system that was at least as good, if
Speaker 1: not superior, to MS DOST in order to have made
Speaker 1: that a more competitive space. But IBM didn't have that.
Speaker 1: Microsoft had it, and of course, for Microsoft, it made
Speaker 1: way more sense to license out MS DOSS to any
Speaker 1: company that was capable of running it, because that you
Speaker 1: could just make money from multiple customers. So Microsoft was
Speaker 1: making out like a bandit compared to IBM. IBM would
Speaker 1: end up staying in the PC market for several years,
Speaker 1: but their choices meant that it was tough to create
Speaker 1: products that had good profit margins and good enough sales
Speaker 1: to justify that that industry, And in two thousand five,
Speaker 1: IBM ultimately decided that it had had enough and it's
Speaker 1: sold off its PC businesses to Lenovo for a cool
Speaker 1: one point seven five billion dollars. And at that point
Speaker 1: IBM said I'm out. But the architecture they had created,
Speaker 1: the MS DOWS and then later on Windows operating system platforms,
Speaker 1: had defined what PCs were, and to this day, most
Speaker 1: computers you find out there follow that modular architecture that
Speaker 1: IBM set up, where you can mix and match pieces
Speaker 1: even to the point where you can build your own machine.
Speaker 1: You can buy all the individual components and build your
Speaker 1: own computer, and then you just have to get the
Speaker 1: operating system, which means typically that you're getting like Microsoft Windows.
Speaker 1: You could go with a different operating system if you
Speaker 1: wanted to, but you probably wouldn't refer to that machine
Speaker 1: as a PC, because again, we typically use PC as
Speaker 1: shorthand for a Windows based machine, or if you're talking
Speaker 1: about the old ones and MS DOSS based machine. And
Speaker 1: that's it. I have finally come to the end of this,
Speaker 1: this long journey talking about the early days of personal
Speaker 1: computers and why it looks the way it does today.
Speaker 1: Why it is that you have the Windows machines on
Speaker 1: one side, the Macintosh machines or the Max on the
Speaker 1: other side, and not a whole lot of other stuff
Speaker 1: in the middle. Again, you have your Linux distros and
Speaker 1: some other operating systems that are out there, but your
Speaker 1: two big players are mac and uh, the Windows based machines.
Speaker 1: And that's this is the reason why. It's because IBM
Speaker 1: had to find this standard in N one, and other
Speaker 1: companies were able to follow along with that standard and
Speaker 1: slowly chip away at IBM to the point where the
Speaker 1: massive company said, you know, it just doesn't make sense
Speaker 1: for us to be in this market anymore. We can't
Speaker 1: really compete at a level that is truly profitable, so
Speaker 1: let's get out, and they did. I hope you guys
Speaker 1: enjoyed this series of episodes, and our next episode, we'll
Speaker 1: be talking about something totally different. I'm gonna follow up
Speaker 1: on a company that I did a series of episodes
Speaker 1: about in the past, but it's been a couple of
Speaker 1: years since I've talked about them, so we're gonna catch
Speaker 1: up and find out what Nintendo has been up to
Speaker 1: since two thousand sixteen. So tune in for that one.
Speaker 1: If you have suggestions for future episodes of tech Stuff,
Speaker 1: send me a message. You can send it to my
Speaker 1: email address for the show that is tech Stuff at
Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com, or drop me a line
Speaker 1: on Twitter or Facebook. The handle for both of those
Speaker 1: is tech Stuff hs W. Don't forget to follow us
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Speaker 1: in there, join the chat room. I look forward to
Speaker 1: seeing you and I'll talk to you again really soon.
Speaker 1: For more on this and thousands of other topics. Is
Speaker 1: that how stuff Works dot com, wh whe