On Thu, Jun 30, 2016 at 3:21 PM, Clem Cole <clemc@ccc.com> wrote:

On Thu, Jun 30, 2016 at 2:31 PM, Dan Cross <crossd@gmail.com> wrote:

...
why didn't they have a more capable kernel than MS-DOS?
I don't think they cared. or felt it was needed at the time (I disagreed then and still do).

Yeah...I guess you are right.

Surely a motivated team could have produced a floppy-only system capable of running multiple processes, etc. It wouldn't be Unix, it wouldn't even necessarily be a clone of Unix, but it could have been something better than MS-DOS.
As Marc pointed out. The PC was fabulously successful for what it was designed to be. They wanted something the run VisiCalc and later a word processor for corporate America. We are programmers saw it >>could<< have been more capable, but they did not really care. The system way, way out did what it was planned. So it's hard to tell folks that did something bad.

...
I'm not sure I would assert that their success was due to good technical decisions;
exactly.

...
The IBM brand added de facto legitimacy to the personal computer in the workplace at a critical time when it was just starting to make inroads into business: surely their success had a lot more to do with that than choosing to use the 8088 and DOS?
Indeed.

Although I think a side story is that you did not mention is that IBM allowed the system to be cloned. Remember at this same time, Apple out Franklin computer out of business for cloning the Apple II. Because the PC became a standard of sort, because their were choices in getting lower cost systems, not just buying from IBM. That ended top cementing it,

That's an excellent point.

The VHS vs. Betamax argument may apply here.
Maybe - I think of it in terms of economics. PCs and DOS "won" because they were cheaper than any other solution to the a similar task and it was good enough,

I suspect that, at the end of the day, this is the real reason for the success of the PC. It's easy, as an engineer, to second-guess it and ask why it couldn't have been "more" than it was, but I suspect a business person would look at me funny. From a business perspective, it was wildly successful (until the clone market undercut IBM so much they got out of the PC business altogether). In economics vs technology, economics almost always wins.

- Dan C.

Like VHS/Betamax it was good enough for many, many people - so economics drove the standard. But also at the time, Apple, who had a better product and actually was more polished than MS-DOS was, was >>perceived<< as being for home use and DOS for business. IBM and MSFT and Intel did a great job of convincing people of that idea. Add to it that it was cheaper, it was a hard order to get businesses to consider Macs.

Which is different from Betamax.... business (TV stations/professionals et al) picked the "better" system. But they did not here, they picked the cheap one no matter what.

Clem