On 6 September 2017 at 20:46, Tapley, Mark <mtap...@swri.edu> wrote: > On Sep 6, 2017, at 10:45 AM, Liam Proven via cctalk <cctalk@classiccmp.org> > wrote: > >> It shows what the machine could have been, if TI hadn't crippled it >> for fear of competing with its higher-end models. > > I have heard similar arguments repeatedly, in reference to systems > from multiple different companies (DEC in particular, but also IBM, TI as > above, etc.). > > It seems so short-sighted as to be almost improbable to me. Of > *course* if a company can offer similar performance in a cheaper model, they > should do that. The high-end customers will still pay premium for the slight > extra performance, but the lower-end model will enable a whole cadre of users > and developers which would otherwise have been priced away to the competition. > > Is this just 20/20 hindsight on my part, or are there factors I don’t > understand in this decision? If it’s just internal company politics - > high-end system group doesn’t want to get squeezed from below - the CEO’s job > is to put a stop to that, I would think.
If there is a general case to be made -- and it's a bit tricky -- then it's perhaps this: [1] Make the best system you can for a particular price-point. If hitting a particular price-point is going to mean horribly compromising the product, then you probably shouldn't be competing in that market. [2] Recognise that home computers are not business computers. What a home/leisure user wants is not the same as what a professional wants. Don't attempt to price-gouge the pros, don't attempt to fob home users off with second-rate rubbish. [3] If attempting to do both of these means that you have either type of product stomping all over the other, then you have failed to properly identify and differentiate your 2 separate markets. Examples... The Commodore VIC-20 and the Sinclair ZX-81 were both horribly compromised, lousily-specified toys, useless for anything serious. But at the time, that's all a budget home machine could do, and because the companies' rivals were not offering budget home machines -- they offered $1000+ pro-level kit -- the machines were huge successes. Both companies did successor models that were significantly better (the C64 and ZX Spectrum) and which sold very well. Then both companies lost the plot a bit and the successor models to _them_ were both rather poor. CBM fooled around with incompatible machines that didn't advance the SOTA much. Sinclair flailed and adapted an uninspiring Spanish model, the Spectrum 128, which failed to address one of the older model's most serious failings -- its poor graphics. This is doubly tragic as Timex _had_ addressed this in the TS2068. If Sinclair had adopted Timex' improved ULA, the Spectrum 128 would have been a significantly more competitive machine. (Another more niche tweak is that the Timex machine could page RAM in in place of the ROM, enabling it to run CP/M. The Sinclair model couldn't until years later with the Amstrad designed-and-built Spectrum +3.) TI was afraid its home computer would compete with its business machines, so it crippled it, leaving an uncompetitive product. But the business machines weren't competitive anyway, and weren't big sellers. Either it could have just made a more expensive but uncrippled TI99/4A -- with, say, 32 kB of 16-bit RAM directly attached to the CPU, a native-code BASIC interpreter instead of 2 different ones, and dumped the cartridge port and the PEB. It would have been considerably more expensive than the VIC-20 that it tried to compete with. The smarter choice would have been to embrace that and just go with it, IMHO. -- Liam Proven • Profile: https://about.me/liamproven Email: lpro...@cix.co.uk • Google Mail/Talk/Plus: lpro...@gmail.com Twitter/Facebook/Flickr: lproven • Skype/LinkedIn/AIM/Yahoo: liamproven UK: +44 7939-087884 • ČR/WhatsApp/Telegram/Signal: +420 702 829 053
