5 Apr
2021
5 Apr
'21
12:55 a.m.
+1 Your right in both cases.The only thing I will point out about the
mobile systems have a unix core - it is extremely hidden and made to be in
accessible which to me is exactly what unix was originally working against.
Instead of “access methods” of the 60s we have frameworks. We lost
simplicity, clarity, and direct access for dancing colors on the LCD and a
GUI. Yes they sell a lot of devices but I’m not sure we are better off.
On Sun, Apr 4, 2021 at 6:26 PM David Arnold <davida(a)pobox.com> wrote:
On 5 Apr 2021, at 02:15, Clem Cole
<clemc(a)ccc.com> wrote:
<…>
IBM lost the Research/Universities to DEC which started out being very
open and easy to work with and extremely cost-effective. As more $s piled
in the market, DEC started to be more and more protective (and moved more
and more upscale). To many at the time, DEC compared to IBM (Mainframe
S/360 vs. PDP-6/9/10) again -- worse technology, but 'good enough' (and a
new growing customer base). The Unix Workstations come out - again 68K vs.
Vax (story repeats). Sun eventually taking the lead from DEC. As Larry
points out, Sun certainly started being extremely friendly to the same
group -- again cost-effective and leading tech. Sun went upscale and the
Intel/Microsoft alliance was good enough to a lot of people.
To your earlier point, Unix lost the developers to DOS, and later Windows,
because they were more “developer friendly”.
I think the dominant factor was simple: cost. You could get a DOS PC with
BASIC, and later eg. Turbo Pascal, for a fraction of what a Unix system
cost. And while the OS barely warranted the name, it was accessible in a
way that Unix wasn’t. Over a quite short time, the third-party
documentation, language support, editors, tools, etc, quickly outpaced Unix
systems, and Windows provided a smooth (and still vastly cheaper) upgrade
path.
Unix (in the form of Linux) only recruited a significant audience again
when its developer cost (nothing, hard to beat) and ease of remote
operation outpaced Windows in the late Internet/early Cloud era.
<…>
For us UNIX historians, we need to be careful and learn from our own
history here -- the Cell Phone/Mobile target is the engine for the next
Christenian style disruption. It is by far the #1 target for people
writing new programs (which I find a little sad personally - but I
understand and accept -- time has marched on). In the end, a small mobile
target will be the tech on top, and available will be driven by market
behavior and those suppliers will be "who has the gold.”
I feel I should point out that both the dominant mobile operating systems
are Unix-hased. The UI is necessarily new, but astonishingly the 50 year
old basic abstractions are the same.
d
--
Sent from a handheld expect more typos than usual