I also have to wonder if MS-DOS would've taken off at all if IBM had kept it. In the 20th century I remember a lot of companies, Microsoft and Apple included, styling themselves as IBM "giant killers." They were cool, (relatively) inexpensive and bringing computing to the masses. IBM, on the other hand, was stodgy, old fashioned and, for lack of a better term, evil. I'm thinking of Apple's "1984" commercial.
For those reasons, people might have rejected MS-DOS just because IBM owned it and glommed onto something like DR-DOS. Robert Crawford Abstract Evolutions LLC (210) 913-3822 -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf Of Bob Bridges Sent: Monday, August 14, 2023 3:16 PM To: IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU Subject: [EXT] Re: The ultimate (another one!) definition of mainframe I sort of agree, but I think underneath we still disagree. I agree that IBM didn't think the PC software was worth developing. And if they had held onto MS-DOS and approached its development in the same way that Microsoft did, sure, they'd probably be worth bazillions. (Probably. I suppose there's market perception involved here too; maybe customers accepted software from Microsoft in numbers that they wouldn't have from IBM. But I don't know how to evaluate that, so lets pretend it's not an issue.) Where we may disagree is in your belief - what I think is your belief - that IBM was therefore short-sighted to let it go. What I was hinting at a week or so ago is that IBM was ~always~ going to judge that MS-DOS wasn't worth their bother, and they were never going to develop it as Microsoft did, and therefore (in a sense) they did the sensible thing by letting go of it, letting someone else take it and run with it. They did themselves no harm because they would never have done it themselves - and incidentally in the process they did the rest of us an enormous favor. And did themselves the same favor, because I can be certain without looking that every employee at IBM now has a powerful PC on his desk, which would not have happened had they kept control of DOS themselves. If IBM were a different company, sure, maybe that different company should have held on to MS-DOS. But as it is ... --- Bob Bridges, robhbrid...@gmail.com, cell 336 382-7313 /* [Your patient] has not yet been anything like long enough with the Enemy to have any real humility yet. What he says, even on his knees, about his own sinfulness is all parrot talk. At bottom, he still believes he has run up a very favourable credit balance in the Enemy's ledger by allowing himself to be converted.... -advice to a tempter from The Screwtape Letters by C S Lewis */ -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <IBM-MAIN@LISTSERV.UA.EDU> On Behalf Of Jon Perryman Sent: Monday, August 14, 2023 15:23 I'm saying that if IBM retained control in MS-DOS and put in the same effort as z/OS, they could have been worth bazillions. The problem is that IBM has always been half-assed in the PC market. Bill Gates didn't do anything groundbreaking. MS-Windows came 6 years after Mac. The mouse & GUI was invented by Xerox before 1973. These corporations simply considered PC's chump change not worth the bother. IBM and Xerox failed because they considered PC more of a nuisance than a goldmine. > --- On Monday, August 14, 2023 at 06:56:39 AM PDT, Bob Bridges > <robhbrid...@gmail.com> wrote: > Wait, MS-DOS is what you were talking about, before? You're > suggesting that if IBM had hung on to MS-DOS at the time, they would now be > worth bazillions instead of Microsoft? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@listserv.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
