Jul

2

I remember back in the mid 1980s, the huge battle when AT&T and IBM entered the personal computer market. The Commodore 64 was the product that first entered the market place as I remember, in 1982, and it was an amazing hit. Then everyone else decided to pile in.

I also recall the Bowmar Brain that was so popular as a hand held calculator. Bowmar was later overtaken in market share and technology by Texas Instruments, Hewlett Packard, and others.

AT&T, after years of losing money, exited the PC business and left it to HP, Apple and Dell to charge forward. IBM is as strong and as powerful as any technology company ever was — they did not get the name "Big Blue" for nothing.

Ultimately IBM decided to leave the PC business and focus on their bread and butter mainframe business. Technology can be a very very difficult boat to steer, and it can be extremely hazardous and dangerous to stay ahead of consumer needs, wants, and demands.

Andrew Moe comments:

Talking of advancing technology, these guys are in the news today after taking apart an iPhone step by step, and identifying all the parts by make and model. If the profits are ephemeral, they won't be for Apple alone. 

James Lackey adds:

The iPhone may be a leap of innovation, but of course others will adapt, and prices will fall. What is uncertain is how much innovation and cost will trickle down to the sedan market of cell phones. Perhaps that equation, how the mass market accepts and is willing to pay for the new bells and whistles, will set the pricing and production of future iPhones? Will the iPhone still be a sporty two seater high performance vehicle, or just another used sedan at 50% off current retail, in five years time.

Greg Calvin offers: 

The fear of competition eating away market share of the iPod has been one of the chief concerns for aapl shareholders over the last few years. Somehow its market share has held up, despite an array of competitors entering the arena, including Microsoft and Sony. The iPod, and it would increasingly seem Apple themselves, have garnered cache, or an enviable 'cool' factor. Cache, when ingrained into the social consciousness, draws and retains business, wards off even possibly superior competition, and protects profits that would all but disappear with commoditization. Sony had it, and for the most part lost it.

The first generation iPhone needs a good number of improvements, notably Web speed, voice rec., an expansion slot, and availability of keyboard in landscape mode. A shame not to have GPS with that big beautiful display. If Apple can address the most critical of these issues, the challenge of attaining 1% market share might be done more with brand than technical wizardry. Who knows what the competition might come up with however. Advanced voice recognition apps, maybe.

Just a few of the countless names that still do at least reasonably well and lever their brand names to command premium over cheaper generic and/or superior competition include Coke, Bayer, Nyquil, Listerine, Marlboro, Intel, Rolex, Bose Wave $400 alarm clocks, Oakley, diamonds, Baskin Robbins, Harley Davidson, Jim Beam, Windows, Rolls Royce, Foster Farms, Chanel, Federal Express and Starbucks.

Alan Millhone adds: 

In 1964 my parents took my to NYC for the World's Fair. My father worked all his life for the telephone company and I remember going to the 'Ma Bell' exhibit with them. There we saw things of the future like being able to see one another when you talk! 

Scott Brooks adds: 

I am reminded of two things from college (1982 - 1986) at little 'ol Southeast Missouri State University.

I took a statistics class and we had what I believe were Texas Instrument calculators. They were a bit bigger and bulkier than the units we have available today (maybe the size of two or three calculators stacked on top of each other). Their read-outs were all and you had to push the buttons real hard to the point where they "clicked". But what I remember most about them was that they were "caged" to the desks. Literally attached to the desk by some sort of metal unit that prevented them from being stolen.

The other thing I remember was that the statistics professor, who was also a psychology instructor, had me do an experiment with him of the effects of Scopolamine Hydrobromide on mice. It was pretty cool. I got to give mice shots of SHB, and put them in spinning apparatus to make them dizzy. Then the coolest part was that I got to do brain surgery on the mice.

At the end of the experiment, I had to type up a paper on my findings and notes. Bob, one of my fraternity brothers, had this typewriter looking thing that had a small screen on the front of it (similar in size to the read out screen on an calculator). You could type the words and see them scroll across the screen. As a result, you could proof read what you were typing, but only one or two words at a time. And there was no spell check so you’d better know how to spell. If memory serves me right the read out was so small that I couldn't even fit big words or phrases on the screen at the same time.

It was a very slow and tedious way to type a paper. Finally Bob, who was a computer science major, decided to type it for me since he figured he'd need the practice to be ready for the real world. I remember thinking to myself that he wasted his college career on a worthless major. I couldn't see how computers were ever going to catch on. There was no way that this tedious machine with a small 10 or so letter screen was ever going to achieve wide spread public acceptance!

I don't know what ever became of Bob. What I do know is that I was completely wrong about computers. I've never forgotten that lesson and try to apply it to my life everyday, especially when confronted with something that I think is stupid and a waste of time. I try to look beyond whatever that something is today and see what it can become tomorrow!


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