Largobob

The funny thing is that I suspect that Apple IIe's are still operable. They were nearly impossible to kill.

Chief Rob

Most folks think of LOGISTICS as transportation and warehousing when in fact LOGISTICS is getting the correct resource, to the right place, at the right time, AND at an acceptable cost. IBM is not stupid! The Apple cost of ownership, for an economic lifetime, has been less than PCs since the late 1980s when I did my first LOGISTICS oriented cost analysis of Apple vs PCs.

CaptainBobBrown

The state of Massachusetts had (has?) so called "blue sky" laws which prohibited initial stock offerings (IPO's) at prices deemed by the Secretary of State to be unrealistically high. When Apple went public brokers in Massachusetts were not allowed to sell Apple's initial offerings to state residents because the SoT thought the asking price was unrealistic. After all, the State Government had to protect its richest citizens from themselves and their greed to get in on such a good deal. So its richest citizens just went to out of state brokers and bought their outrageously priced Apple stock elsewhere.

The state's bureaucrats all thought they were so righteous when it looked during Steve Job's first tenure at Apple that the company might not make it but I'd bet they cried when Apple turned the corner and proved their "blue skies" were full of clouds of regret that they hadn't bought in early themselves.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

While the generic term “personal computer” was in use prior to IBM’s PC, it was IBM in 1981 in Boca Raton that wrote the open published specification for the modern PC. It was a revolutionary step, because unlike earlier efforts, it described an architecture and bus structure standard that allowed many hundreds of both HW and SW manufacturers to design to that standard, immediately propelling it to global popularity and dominance of the market - it was, in many ways, the first “open standard” computer, a dominating trend in computing today. I was at Tektronix in 1981, and we could see the future of personal computing. In response, Tek issued all its field personnel IBM portable PCs (referred to as luggables), and modems and required that we all read and understand the published PC specification in detail - I still have my copy. An interesting side story is why IBM chose the Intel 8080 series processor when the Motorola 6800 series was arguably more advanced. I had a conversation with one of the original members of the Boca team years later, and he stated that it was because the Intel sales person gave the team his personal phone number so they could reach him at anytime, day or night, with questions.

While IBM did dominate the mainframe business in the mid 60s with the introduction of the 360, I don’t think we can credit them with being the inventors of the mainframe. There were many players in “big iron” in the 50s including Univac, Boroughs, Control Data, NCR, Honeywell and GE. I was on an IBM team in the mid 60s that replaced a Univac vacuum tube computer (that had been around for almost a decade) with a shiney new 360 that had a whopping 32K of core storage at the Univ. of NC. It was several orders of magnitude faster (although not in the league with a cellphone today), took about 10% of the space, and most importantly, did not require an A/C plant 2x the size of the computer for cooling the vacuum tubes.

Btw, I agree that ENIAC was one of the first, if not the first, large scale computer, dating back to the mid 40s if I recall correctly.

kd7eir Loc: Tucson, AZ

"Previn revealed that Macs make up 25 percent of IBM's 537,000 active laptops"

I would NOT call that "Converting to Macs"

mrjcall Loc: Woodfin, NC

227,000 and growing..... I'd call that more than 25%....AND converting....

jccash Loc: Longwood, Florida

Great post. Good history lesson. Thank you

sirlensalot Loc: Arizona

The difference is probably huge to IBM, but I doubt enough for small businesses to change brands. I retired from a company that did the opposite because Apple parts were proprietary, and laptops sat on the shelf awaiting parts not readily available. They claimed the PC was more modular by able to replace smaller and cheaper components as oppose to whole boards on the Apple. Not a tech guy. Just forwarding what some IT guys said. They were thrilled when the final changes were made. Lots of available parts, and repair times sped up for the users, cost of repairs came down. Everyone was happier.

bobbyjohn Loc: Dallas, TX

I have somewhat of an insider view of this. You see, I work for Big Blue in the IT department supporting machines when they break (from a software perspective), and also do the setup of new machines delivered to the employees. This includes WINDOWS, LINUX, and MAC machines. I respectfully disagree with the contention that support is easier on a MAC.

First, let’s eliminate LINUX from the equation, since that is really a dog, brought into IBM many years ago with the thinking that LINUX would not have as many viruses as Windows…that’s true…but still a beast to support.

Some points to consider which we in support see every day regarding the Windows vs. MAC debate:

1. When a MAC breaks, yes there is a Level 1 support group, and if they can fix the problem, all is good. But when even they can’t fix it, it comes to us at Level 2 for a likely reimage. The good news here for MAC users is that Level 1 support is in Austin, TX, which is very good, and where they speak English. Level 1 support for Windows is in India…read between the lines!

2. When we ask users if they like their MAC…it is a case of they either “Love It” or “Hate it.” Most MAC users typically say they have a problem doing their job on a MAC…that a MAC cannot do the stuff that IBM requires, stuff that Windows can do…most wish they could revert to Windows, but will have to wait for their next “refresh” cycle, 4 years hence.

3. When a user with a machine that must be retired for any reason asks me for my recommendation for which machine to apply for…my answer is always WINDOWS.

4. Number crunching (14% vs 6% to Level 2) aside, building or fixing a MAC is much more problematic than building or fixing a Windows machine. Just like the political polls are many times just plain incorrect (witness USA Trump vs Hilary), the numbers in the MAC vs. WINDOWS debate are questionable.

5. The website that makes these claims is “AppleInsider.” Dontcha think that such a website has an agenda which is pro MAC? I haven’t checked, but if there were a website named “WindowsInsider,” one might get a different perspective. Hmmm...perhaps a case of "Fake News!"

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

chikid68 Loc: Tennesse USA

if you want another good laugh think about this one
When I worked at an Apple distribution center the computers in the warehouse were all running Windows. Yes its true for critical distribution software Apple uses Windows

dcampbell52 Loc: Clearwater Fl

I used to manage a multi-brand computer store back in the early 1980's (carried Compaq, HP, NEC, Pet and others, then an all Apple store back during the Apple II, Apple II+, Apple III, Lisa days... even got to go to Cupertino on the "Dealer Advisory Board" at Apple's HQ. This was back when Jobs and Woz were running the show and had to take the occasional "Doobie" break.. lol

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

Early Apple machines were quite advanced. They produced a GUI interface in 1979 (which they stole from Xerox) long before Microsoft Windows (1986), although there were aps for MSDOS from the beginning that had a GUI, such as Frameworks, it just wasn’t incorporated into the OS. They also used Motorola 68000 CPUs (the hottest 32-bit CPU at the time) and SCSI interface for disk instead of the IBM ISA bus interface.

TheShoe Loc: Lacey, WA

And you might also consider that IBM had Windows for OS2 before M$ introduced its Windows. They blew it by pricing it too high. At the time that Microsoft's Windows came out, they practically gave it away in order to get a foothold in the market while IBM charged something like $140 for OS2, which made it an expensive piece of s/w for the individual.

TriX Loc: Raleigh, NC

One of IBM’s mistakes - right up there with choosing token ring instead of Ethernet, SSA instead of FibreChannel, etc. My next door neighbor was a mid-level IBM manager in the 70s/80s, and his company computer had OS2 installed. At his request, I installed MSDOS for him... No disrespect to IBM intended - I used to work for them. They have been largely responsible for our computing environment today, and they have produced tens of thousands of patents and extensive basic technology research.

BTW, it’s just been announced that they are buying Red Hat (for 34 Billion!). I was at Red Hat the day they went public (they were a NetApp customer), and we were saying that it was crazy that what was basically a support organization was trying to style itself as an OS company - boy, were we mistaken.