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PC turns 25? Apple may beg to differ

Posted by Scott_Ruecker on · 2 comments
ITWire; By Stan Beer 		Mail this story
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Today, as everybody kicks up their heels at the offices of PC manufacturers worldwide celebrating the 25th anniversary of the desktop computer known as the IBM PC, one wonders what Steve Jobs and the crew over at Apple Computer must be thinking.

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Comments (2)

Bob_Robertson ·
It's not the IBM PC that is being celebrated, it's the fact that it was an open, published hardware standard. That allowed innovation without having to brave reverse engineering or patent/copyright lawsuits. Any board built to the standards would (usually) work with all the other boards. Brand irrelevant.

Apple never did that. Apple always maintained a stranglehold on their hardware and software. It's easy to see that as the reason they have never "broken out" of their niche. That in no way implies that they do not fill that niche very well, only that all innovation in that niche has to come from a single provider.

Apple: Proprietary software on proprietary hardware

PC: Proprietary software on commodity hardware

Linux: Commodity software on commodity hardware (actually, Linux on so much hardware that it's kind of irrelevant commodity or proprietary, but commodity is still where the action is)

jimf ·
Apple may beg all it wants, the IBM PC was, as you say, the first open standard.

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