Computer Wars: Difference between revisions

Broadly speaking, the competition between computer companies to increase their market share. More specifically, though, the [[Computer Wars]] refer to arguments (usually online) between computer users themselves as to the superiority of the various systems and companies.

 

 

Computer wars were at their peak back in the 1970s-80s, when there was the most competition. Any geek living at that time would know that putting two fans of rival computers next to each other was ''not'' a good idea (and, in fact, it's '''still''' not a good idea). Some of these battles have been raging for decades now, and [[Internet Backdraft|pity the poor newbie who gets caught in the middle]].

 

The wars are as follows: (Since so many different computers were produced, this page only includes the more notable ones. Also, the battles may overlap.)

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* '''Sides''': Altair 8800 vs. IMSAI 8080 vs. IBM 5100.

* '''Winner''': The 8800.

 

 

 

September 1975 was the first entry of IBM, whose 5100 portable computer was far more powerful than any computer beforehand; despite that, it was marketed specifically to scientists and the like with prices ranging from $9,000 for the A1 to '''$20,000''' for the C4.

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* '''Winner''': Unknown; most likely the Apple ][.

 

The second company was Tandy (now Radio Shack), which introduced its much cheaper TRS-80 machine a few months after Apple. Affectionately known as the "Trash-80", it was a basic little machine with a black-and-white monitor (later built into the case itself), a "bouncy" keyboard (read: yoouu enndded upp tttypinngg likke thisss), and a huge number of accessories including a 5 MB hard drive...for the low price of $1,500. Though popular, it failed to match Apple's success.

 

 

The market was also flooded with S-100 machines sporting the CP/M operating system. It is important to note that the various CP/M systems weren't really competing with the Apple ][, Atari, Radio Shack, or Commodore computers. The CP/M machines were both much more expensive and more compatible with minicomputers (like the VAX), making them business machines more than game systems. The Apple ][, however, had an expandable architecture and VisiCalc, the first spreadsheet program, putting it somewhere in between contemporary home computers and the average CP/M system. In the later years it even received a Z-80 expansion card, which allowed it to run CP/M directly.

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* '''Sides''': Commodore [[VIC 20]], Sinclair ZX80, Apple ][ (again), [[IBM Personal Computer|IBM PC]], Radio Shack's TRS-80 Color Computer (the CoCo), Osbourne 1, and a whole lot of others.

* '''Winner''': The Apple ][, then the VIC-20, then the PC (for now).

The most important of these was IBM, who [[It Will Never Catch On|after dismissing the idea of a personal computer]], turned around and released the IBM PC in August 1981. <ref>(Still, they had nothing on Digital president Ken Olsen, who once famously dismissed any notions of a PC in his infamous quip "No one would ever want a computer at home." He later tried to [[Retcon]] this as a reference to home automation, but given DEC's history it's hard to believe him.)</ref> The IBM PC was a remarkable computer because it was much like a classic CP/M system, only a lot less expensive — it had an open architecture (leading to third-party hardware makers and to clonemakers like Compaq), a relatively nice OS (DOS, CP/M-86, or, if you felt rich enough to afford not only the OS, but also a config it won't choke on, Microsoft Xenix or UCSD p-system <ref>(both were essentially [[Mainframes and Minicomputers|minicomputer]] OSes ported to a PC, although Xenix greatly influenced DOS command language and its directory structure was later lifted into the DOS 2.1 wholesale)</ref>, as opposed to the ROM BASIC of the VIC-20), and compatibility with minicomputer systems. It also launched [[Microsoft]] into the spotlight — they spent $50,000 to buy the rights to a CP/M clone called QDOS and hacked together a port of it for IBM's system called MS-DOS.

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* '''Winner''': The Commodore 64 (which became the most popular computer in history), followed by the IBM PC and its clones.

 

As for other computers, the Apple IIc updated the older IIe and is fondly remembered by schoolchildren of the 1980s, and the IBM PC continued to climb in market share, obtained features such as color graphics, and was cloned by other companies. In Japan [[MSX]] reigned supreme, though towards the end of this period much more powerful (but still [[No Export for You|Japan-exclusive]]) 16/32-bit systems like NEC PC-98 or Fujitsu FM Towns displaced it from the top.

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* '''Sides''': The [[Apple Macintosh]] line, [[Amiga|Commodore Amiga]], [[Atari ST]], Apple IIc/IIgs, IBM PC clones, and Commodore 64 (again).

* '''Winner''': The PC clones, then the Mac, then the C64.

On the other side of the [[Iron Curtain]], the situation curiously repeated the Western one, but lagged behind by 5-10 years. By that time PCs and their clones barely started to make a dent, as they were imported and thus extremely expensive, while on the home computer market the pitched battle raged between ZX Spectrum (technically, a hordes of locally-produced clones), the whole batch of indigenous 8-bit CP/M machines, and [[BK-0010]] (a Soviet home-computer-scaled PDP-11 clone). Various Commodore and Atari machines hardly marked on the radar — they had a lot of custom chips and couldn't be implemented on the local technical base, unlike the good ol' Speccy. It won the war on the home market in the end, but by the mid-1990s PC already was the king, and it just quietly died of old age.

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* '''Sides''': [[Microsoft Windows]], Apple [[Mac OS]] X, [[UNIX|GNU/Linux, BSD]] BeOS, IBM OS/2.

* '''Winner''': Ongoing and complicated. For desktops, Windows is still winning by a long shot despite valiant efforts by OSX and GNU/Linux. GNU/Linux has the lead for servers and dominates in the fields of supercomputing and computer animation rendering.

 

 

This period also saw Microsoft fully switching from the old (CP/M derived) DOS-shell Windows to the NT-based XP across their entire product line; just as DOS was reminiscent of old DEC PDP-11 OSes by way of CP/M, [[Spiritual Successor|NT was based more-or-less directly on VMS]], UNIX's main competition on the [[The Eighties|1980s]] DEC VAX minicomputers that both latched onto (UNIX started on the PDP-7 and PDP-11, the predecessors to the VAX).

[[Fandom Rivalry|Oh, and whatever you do, don't walk into a Mac vs. Windows vs. GNU/Linux debate. Also, try to stay away from AMD vs. Intel debates.]]

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* '''Sides''': Apple iOS (iPad, iPhone, iPod...), Google Android, RIM BlackBerry, Microsoft Windows Mobile / Windows Phone, Nokia Maemo/MeeGo, Palm/HP webOS

 

The 2000s saw great increases in the usage share of cell phones among the population at large. There arose high-end "smartphone" cell phones, equipped with touchscreens and enough processing power and memory / storage capacity to rival that of many desktop and/or notebook PCs from the previous decade (and thereby being suitable for running [[Mobile Phone Game|mobile phone games]] on). The category of "tablet PCs" also emerged, consisting of machines with internal hardware similar to smartphones <ref>(most of them, that is; a few have internals more like that of notebook PCs)</ref>, but with much larger touchscreens, and not all of them able to function as cell phones. As a side effect of the large-scale production of internal hardware components for smartphones and tablets, there arose a niche market of small "single-board computers" based on smartphone-class internals (such as the DigiKey / Texas Instruments BeagleBoard and the Raspberry Pi), intended for use by computer experts (such as students and hobbyist programmers).

 

 

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[[Category:Internet Backdraft]]