Talk:IBM

Archived by Eustress

I've reverted Eustress's archiving. The discussion is still of interest. Wikipedia threads frequently lie dormant for several years before being taken up again, as they have ongoing relevance to the topic. This is the first time I've seen a Talk page archived because of inactivity of the threads. The usual reason is that there is an unwieldy amount of material that needs to be brought back to a manageable level. Koro Neil (talk) 01:30, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Archiving was done in accordance with talk page guidelines, which state, "When... a particular subject is not discussed any more, do not delete the content—archive it." If you feel a thread was archived prematurely, feel free to bring it back out of the archive or to simply reference the text in the archives. —Eustress ^talk 02:25, 28 February 2012 (UTC)

Late 1970's and PC's

The article says: "In the late 1970s, IBM underwent some internal convulsions between those in management wanting to concentrate on their bread-and-butter mainframe business, and those wanting the company to invest heavily in the emerging personal computer industry." As far as I know, this is incorrect. Mainframes and other proprietary systems continued to be IBMs main business at least for some two decades more. Yes, it was revolutionary for IBM to copperate with external firms (Microsoft and Intel) to launch the IBM PC, but IBM profits continued to be dependent on IBMs proprietary systems.

Law suits

An essential aspect of IBMs history is missing: the various law suits about alleged monopolistic practices IBM was involved in (was the article "cleaned" by IBMers who don't like to be reminded of that time?) I don't know enough of IBM history to update the article, but I do know that IBM was convicted as early as the 1950s to a consent decree that was only lifted some 10 years ago. In the 1970s IBM was again accused for monopolistic practices, and from 1974 prepared for a split-up, with a structure of divisions that might split off as independent companies. In the early 1980s, president Reagan allegedly told the "independent" prosecutor that a strong USA needs strong firms, so that he'd better focus his attention to other projects. Then the divisions merged again into a "customer set organisation".

Unlike some other companies accused of monopolistic practices, IBM was always keen on avoiding conflicts in this field, and employees who were found to violate the internal "business conduct guidelines" were dismissed immediately. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rbakels (talk • contribs) 20:12, 27 March 2012 (UTC)

I too find it mind-boggling that none of the lawsuits, the *issues*, raised by IBM's past behavior are included in this article. The moves to crush any competitor who tried to either provide non-IBM parts or non-IBM service were stopped only after *much* agony. The omission here of any such mention is amazing, because this action and counter-action is what established for the whole industry that replacement parts and service were allowable and retribution against customers was illegal. If this were an individual I'm sure that industry-wide precedents established through their actions would be noted. Why not here? 24.28.17.231 (talk) 02:52, 1 June 2012 (UTC)

Classical business strategical mistakes

One example is Polaroid, which came into a crisis when the digital camera was developed. Polaroid actually researched and developed a digital camera model, but as its business idea was to sell cheap cameras and make profit on selling film packages it could not find a way to make continued profit on a digital camera, so it continued with its old business model, until it was bankrupted when the digital camera took over the market.

Another well known example was IBM's business strategy. For many years IBM thought that a few powerful computers would be enough for the whole world. IBM leased terminals, a keyboard, a monitor and a telephone modem, and to use the terminal the terminal was connected to a big computer. The company which leased this terminal from IBM had to pay for education from IBM, and use IBM's software. When the first personal computers appeared in 1979 IBM ignored them, seeing them as useless toys. During the first years of the 1980s hundreds of companies produced ever better personal computers, and in 1983 a number of companies developed the MSX standard to make these personal computers compatible with each other.

Suddenly IBM realized that they had made a big mistake. People wanted to own personal computers, and IBM was threatened by this new development. To counter this threat IBM did something they had never done before. IBM developed a personal computer, the PC, and did not protect it with a patent. This was necessary to make the IBM PC the market leader. The circuit was published in electronics magazines and companies all over the world started building PC's. Other personal computers like Sinclair ZX 80, ZX Spectrum and Sinclair QL, Commodore 64, and personal computers made by Toshiba and many other companies were quickly forgotten, together with the MSX standard. IBM only protected the BIOS circuit, so they could have some control over this new market. But the BIOS circuit was reverse engineered by other companies and IBM lost all control of the hardware. IBM made one more try to regain control over the PC, it produced the operating system OS2, to compete with Microsoft, but eventually gave up and went back to its traditional business idea, producing big computers. This chain of events gave us the PC, a standard personal computer which billions of people can use, and they can use the same programs and exchange data and programs with each other.

This chain of events also had side effects. Since IBM chose to use Intel's series of computer chips, 8088, 8086, and later 80286 and 80386, etc.. instead of the more powerful Zilog Z80 and its later models Z800 and Z8000, or the Motorola computer chips, 6800, MOS version 6501, 68000, Intel became the dominating supplier for computer chips for many years into the future.

And since Microsoft was chosen as the producer of the operating system for this PC Microsoft became the software giant it is today.

I think this should be mentioned in the article about IBM, and/or the article about the PC, but I don't have time to look up sources, so I leave it as a suggestion on the discussion page. Roger491127 (talk) 05:46, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

There is some truth to what you write, but also some falsehood and unnecessary negativity. First of all, IBM from its inception to the beginning of the 1980s was a business supplier first and foremost. When the first personal computers arrived in 1975 (not 1979), they were hobbyist contraptions that were useless for businesses. IMSAI tried to turn a kit computer into a serious business product and failed. When the first computers aimed at a general audience appeared in 1977 (again, not 1979), they were not capable enough to be useful for a business. Commodore attempted to make a personal computer targeted at businesses, the PET, and while it did not fail, it was not widely adopted. IBM went merrily on its way making big bucks selling mainframes to businesses. It probably could have looked into microcomputer development a few years earlier than they did, but so could have DEC, Data General, Hewlett Packard, or CDC. The whole industry missed the boat because there was not a large enough market to justify the expenditure needed for a quality business product. Home computers are really a fascinating development because it was a case of hobbyists releasing pretty useless products (talking more the Altair than the Apple II or TRS-80 here) that a small but fanatical tech community was just interested enough in to will a broader market into existence. You say IBM dismissed microcomputers as "useless toys," but the truth is that the very first computer products released were exactly that. Only a tech head who enjoys programming for the sake of programming could love a machine like the Altair.

Now unlike a few of the companies above and your intimations, IBM actually did see a potential microcomputer business market developing fairly early. When Frank Cary split the company into SBUs he created an entry-level systems unit that released a microcomputer in 1975 called the IBM 5100. It was not a great product, but it showed IBM was trying. Then something happened that no one expected, a guy named Dan Fylstra came up with a business application for microcomputers that did not already exist on mainframes, a spreadsheet program. It was the release of Visicalc on the Apple II in 1979 that finally allowed that computer to enjoy substantial sales (Apple loves to claim that its computer defined and led the microcomputer market from the moment it launched, but trust me, it didn't) and caused businesses to embrace the microcomputer for the first time. The entry-level systems unit at IBM immediately recognized that a sea-change had occurred and began taking the steps needed to get their own microcomputer into the marketplace.

When the IBM PC hit, the business computer market was still in its infancy. Even in the home computer market, there had not been a million seller, that would not happen until the VIC 20 passed that mark in 1982. The IBM PC did not reach the market first, and maybe IBM was not quite visionary enough to see the market before it began to materialize, but it responded pretty darn fast once the new era was upon it and before anyone had proven conclusively that there was a viable business market for microcomputers, so they were hardly a "me too" copying someone else's successful idea or an arrogant corporation ignoring a new development. In 1979, the year you accuse IBM of ignoring microcomputers, William Lowe was writing the marketing analysis that would form the basis for IBM's entry into the microcomputer market. The PC was released in 1981, two yeas before your MSX standard. It chased everything else out of the business market after the release of Lotus 1-2-3 in 1983, and has really never looked back. Even with the clones, IBM was the top computer maker in the country in the mid 1980s. Hardly a failure.

Now mistakes, there are certainly a few. The company erred badly in thinking that it could keep its BIOS proprietary and license it. It screwed up even worse by agreeing to let Bill Gates sell DOS to other computer companies. It did lose control of the PC market it created, and that was bad. Then, IBM tried to get the market back through the combination of hardware (the PS/2, which had a different architecture than previous PCs) and OS/2, and this was another disaster because no one was willing to shift to a new system that would make all their old stuff obsolete and IBM only ended up losing further ground to Compaq and others. IBM never really understood how to handle a mass market and failed to realize that individual components had become more important than complete vertically integrated systems, and they paid the price for it. Comparing IBM's response to the microcomputer market to Polaroid's response to the digital camera though is ridiculous. Whatever mistakes it made in handling the PC business in the 1980s, IBM did not dismiss, nor fail to take advantage of, the emergence of the microcomputer. Indrian (talk) 07:37, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

I largely accept your corrections and additions to the story I told. But I think this story you and I are talking about should be told somewhere in wikipedia, because it has so many far-reaching implications for the development of the personal computer, the computer market from the mid-1980s until today and into the future, and the development of Intel and Microsoft. I wonder if this is covered in one or more articles in wikipedia I have not discovered yet.

By the way, I have followed and collected electronics magazines since 1965 so I am well aware of the experimental kits sold in 1975-1979, including the TRS-80 motherboard and the IMSAI computer but the first more generally known usable personal computers started with the Sinclair ZX 80/81, as far as I know, and that's where I started the story.

Okay, it was not a mistake as big as the Polaroid example, but the move IBM made when they designed the IBM PC and published it and did not protect it was very exceptional in the history of IBM, it was a drastic move, maybe even a desperate move, to take control over the personal computer market. This move shows that IBM realized that they had made a big mistake and had to do something drastic to regain the initiative. And it was a success in the personal computer market, as most of the personal computers since then are based on the IBM PC design, but a failure for IBM, because IBM could not control the BIOS market as they had hoped.Roger491127 (talk) 07:53, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Right, I concur with all of that. IBM took an unprecedented step of using off-the-shelf parts and licensed software and ended up completely losing control of the market as a result and never getting it back, despite later failed attempts. My only real issue was with the first part of the narrative relating to IBM's failure to take the market seriously. To me, it looks like for the most part they had a measured response to the birth of the market, perhaps missing their window by a year or two but still striking when the market was just starting to heat up and experiencing a successful product launch, even if their future performance was severely impacted by some of their choices as discussed above. I also disagree that the ZX80/81 were the beginning of useable personal computers. The trinity of the PET, TRS-80, and Apple II in 1977 were all more capable than the early Sinclair machines, and they also outsold the ZX80. I am not sure that the ZX80 really qualifies as well known or useable, but certainly the VIC 20 and ZX81, both released in 1981, represent two of the earliest million-selling computers, and something akin to mass market penetration began with the release of the Commodore 64 and ZX Spectrum in 1982. Indrian (talk) 10:12, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

The PET, TRS-80, and Apple II in 1977 were not in a price range or usable for most people. The first usable and affordable computer I ever saw was when the owner of the local bookstore asked me to come into the store room, he showed me a ZX-81 and asked if I could help him understand how it worked. I showed him how to use it. My conclusion was that I should wait for a better model. My first ready-built computer was a Sinclair Spectrum 16k which I upgraded to 48k. I chose the Spectrum over the Vic/Commodore models because the Spectrum had much better documentation. I bought a book containing the full listing of its BIOS, with a comment for every line of assembler, so I could use its subroutines in my own programs. Before I bought the Spectrum I built an experimental computer with Z80 chips and some static memory chips. So my perspective is what the development looked like for a young man with a very limited budget but a lot of knowledge.

A few years later I could afford to buy a PC motherboard, I built a power supply of my own design and changed the frequencies of a surplus monitor so it could be used with the PC. At first it looked like it worked, I could write letters on the monitor. But something was wrong and after a few hours I realized that something was wrong with the BIOS. I called the company that sold me the motherboard and they were surprisingly ready to help. "If you can plug it in yourself we can send you a new BIOS immediately". I plugged in the chip and the PC worked as it should. I understood that the company pirated the BIOS, they had bought only one and burned pirate copies themselves. Sometimes they failed the burning process so they were happy to send a new BIOS.Roger491127 (talk) 17:15, 30 April 2012 (UTC)

Sounds like good times. I am sensing a British/Commonwealth/European perspective on the market though. In the United States, the home computer market was defined as a sub-$500 market back in those early days. The TRS-80 fits that market description, so long as you don't buy a monitor with it. It also moved 250,000 units, so it was performing well and connecting with an audience beyond the purely hobbyist crowd. If we are talking IBM, however, you can't start the story in 1979. IBM cared about selling computers to businesses, not people. Neither the PET nor the Apple II were really home products due to their price as you correctly state, but they were viable purchases for businesses. Therefore, if we are talking about useable computers that IBM would care to compete against, the story starts in 1977. If the ZX80 and ZX81 had been the first fully assembled microcomputers released in the U.S., IBM would have scoffed at them and would have been right to do so. Those were clearly consumer products that were never going to be viable for businesses. Indrian (talk) 01:33, 1 May 2012 (UTC)

Yes my perspective is from Sweden, but I bought a lot of electronics and computer magazines published in Britain and USA. For example the first time I saw a circuit schematic over the IBM PC, as far as I can remember, was in a magazine called Circuit Cellar, published in USA. So my perspective was heavily influenced by British and US-American magazines, because we had only one Swedish electronics magazine and it was mainly concerned with audio electronics. For example, I have a complete collection of the British Wireless World from 1965-1984 when the magazine was sold to a commercial company and became a lot thinner both physically and content-wise. I also bought a collection of several hundreds of issues of the magazine Communications of the ACM, the most prestigious magazine in the world about computer algorithms. My total collection of electronics and computer magazines weighs more than a ton, 1000 kg. I stopped buying such magazines completely in 1990, when I got access to internet. Roger491127 (talk) 17:48, 1 May 2012 (UTC)